


April Fools

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2019-04-19 19:49:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14244501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Very AU, Faberry working in a non-profit agency, meet, become friends and fall in love. This is also where they try to play a prank where they pretend to secretly date. Angst meter: lowWarnings: parental death that occurred prior to the onset of the story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Title:** April Fools  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R, maybe  
**Length:** 7000  
**Spoilers:**. Through Sectionals.  
**Summary:** An April Fools’ joke stops being a joke. AU future fic, I’d classify this as angsty romantic comedy.

* * *

 

As with a lot of things that unintentionally became serious with unforeseen and unexpected repercussions, it started out as a joke-- an April Fools’ joke that they wanted to play on their coworkers because they were tired of all the jokes directed at them.

There were eight of them in all, eight women who started off as coworkers in a non-profit agency in a job that was demanding, had long hours, emotionally draining, little pay and was actually a little dangerous to boot. The eight of them worked together as a solid unit for three years and Quinn had come to love all of them-- but she’d loved Rachel the most.

She’d never deny it. It was apparent, and anyway, in a group so large, it was natural there would be micro-groups. She and Rachel clicked from the first day they met, a fact each of them would later to confess to the other was unusual. Quinn heard about people who bonded right away, who became fast friends but it never happened to her until she met Rachel-- not even in high school (because she’d grown up in a small town and there was no one to become ‘fast friends’ with, just the same assholes year after year) or even in college when that sort of thing was _supposed_ to happen. But with Rachel… they just _got_ each other from the get-go. She liked Rachel from the day they met and she liked Rachel a little more each day until pretty soon she just adored the hell out of her and never stopped. It was mutual.

The other girls made fun of them because of it. Any time she and Rachel laughed about something that the others either didn’t get or didn’t find funny, then there were jokes about the ‘Rachel and Quinn Hour’ or how it was something “only those two weirdoes would find funny.” When they all went out together, at least one person would make a comment about not wanting to sit next to Rachel and Quinn if they sat next to each other (and they almost always did) because they’d get annoyed by all the dumb jokes. The others mocked them and said it was some weird Midwestern thing or some dorky Ohio thing, but they hadn’t even known each other before they each ended up working for the same place in LA.

“Whatever,” Quinn would tell them. “You guys are just jealous because we like each other better than we like you guys.”  
\  
Everyone would always roll their eyes in response, but Quinn would always exchange a look with Rachel and Rachel would always smile crookedly at her and wink just to let her know that even though it was meant to be a joke, it was also kind of true.

Then one Friday at the end of February, they all left work and headed into a tiny dive bar in Koreatown to celebrate Judy’s 26th birthday, which they’d all mysteriously agreed was somehow a milestone. The alcohol was plentiful for the birthday girl, but most of the others were being careful not to drink too much. This was LA, and they were all way too car-dependent to risk getting a DUI. They found some tables, pushed them together to accommodate all of them and everyone except Judy ponied up some cash to drink.

Once everyone had a drink in her hand, Quinn linked her arm with Rachel’s.

“Let’s go put some money in the jukebox,” she suggested.

They both loved music, and any time they went to a bar with a juke box, it was a guarantee they’d put money in it.

Rachel grinned. “Yeah.”

They walked off to the jukebox arm-in-arm and stood crowded against each other. They sorted through the entire selection first and then went back to make choices.

They’d first bonded over jukebox music in fact, because during the first week they met, Quinn impulsively asked Rachel if the brunette wanted to get a drink and the brunette equally impulsively answered that she did. They went into a bar with a jukebox, and they simultaneously asked to go to the jukebox. When Rachel chose a Procol Harem song (‘Whiter Shade of Pale’) that Quinn herself loved, the blonde couldn’t help but exclaim “I love you!” in response even though they’d just met four days before. But their friendship was sealed in that moment.

But at _this_ particular moment, they were standing so close together, they were touching while they perused the jukebox selections in a dive bar that Judy chose specifically because once the cash ran out, so did the booze, so there would be no shock when they closed the tab. They bickered and teased one another for their respective tastes in music, even though they tended to like the same bands and songs. Quinn teased Rachel for wanting to listen to Journey, even though they both loved ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ and ‘Anyway You Want It’ and Rachel teased Quinn for wanting to listen to Aretha Franklin, even though they both loved ‘Say A Little Prayer’ and ‘Natural Woman.’ They only teased each other because they each chose those songs every time they went into a bar with a jukebox and their bickering was good-natured. But ultimately, they were able to agree on songs by the Smiths, the Cure, the Kooks, A-Ha, Queen and ABBA. They made their selections and made their way back to the table.

“Hey,” Sarah said, grinning when she saw they returned. “I got a really cute picture of you guys at the jukebox,” she said. She passed her digital camera to Rachel so that they could see it.

Rachel took it, looked at it and grinned. “You have to email it to me,” she commented. She showed it to Quinn who smiled.

“Me too,” Quinn said.

It was just the two of them standing next to each other at the jukebox, but they happened to have turned their heads toward each other so they were looking at one another while they talked when the picture was taken. Both their faces were clearly visible in it and the affection between them was plain, even though they were bickering when the picture was taken.

“I like it,” Quinn said. “It’s cute.”

“Yeah,” Rachel agreed. She passed the camera back to Sarah and smiled at Quinn.

Since their group was so large, they broke off naturally into smaller groups of conversation. They always came together again, but it was impossible to have a discussion with eight people in the middle of the bar. The other six girls hardly noticed when Quinn leaned even closer into Rachel to get the brunette’s attention. She rested her arm on Rachel’s shoulder as she peered into the brunette’s eyes.

“Nick’s working tonight, right?”  
  
Rachel nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Where’s Dan tonight?”

Quinn shrugged. “At home, probably.”

Rachel chuckled. “When are you going to put that poor man out of his misery?”

Quinn grinned crookedly. “I’m not that bad. And I’m not ready to give up on it yet.”

She was, actually. She was ready to give up on it all the time. It was hard to be with someone who didn’t seem to believe her when she said ‘I love you’ and she had to say it so often, had to _convince_ him so often that sometimes she stopped feeling it. But every time she started to look for a new apartment or think about a life where she didn’t wake up in the middle of the night because of his heavy snoring or trip over his shoes when she came home, she was too paralyzed by inertia to follow through. She loved him but he exhausted the hell out of her and she was at the place in the relationship where she wasn’t sure if the emotional fatigue exhausted the love, or if it was something she could just learn to put up with. She’d dated him for three years and she wasn’t ready to give up on it. She didn’t know what her life would be like without him or if she’d even like a life without him because when it truly came down to it, he loved the hell out of her and she was kind of short on people who loved the hell out of her. He was kind to her, too, and again, she was kind of low on people who were kind to her.

So she stayed and complained. It was a familiar sort of story.

Rachel nodded. “That’s fair,” she said, because she knew the story pretty well by this point. She smiled and leaned in close. It was kind of a sensitive topic for both of them-- there were a lot of sensitive topics for both of them and part of the strength of their friendship came from protecting each other from these sort of conversations becoming too serious, both with one another and with other people. “Lina’s particularly hilarious tonight, right?” Rachel asked, chuckling lowly as she glanced over at their friend who was drunkenly enjoying the attentions of a guy who looked like he should be in a halfway house.

Quinn snorted when she looked over at Lina, too. Unlike the rest of them who were drinking slowly, but steadily because they wanted to be sober in time to drive home, Lina was chugging down her drinks and taking every free drink handed to her. “I refuse to drive her home this time.”

Rachel grinned. “But you live closest to her.”

“That’s not a good enough reason.”

“Be nice,” Rachel said softly. “She’s our friend.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t our friend. She’s just a fool. I hate it when we drink and she gets like this. You don’t see Jude getting drunk and acting like a dumb ass, and it’s _her_ birthday, so she’s entitled.”

“She is pretty reliable for that sort of thing.” Rachel conceded. “Look,” Rachel said, lowering her head to peek up at Quinn’s through her lashes. Quinn couldn’t resist smiling fondly at Rachel and Rachel smiled back. “I picked up Jude so she wouldn’t have to drive,” Rachel said softly. “So I’ll take Lina home, too. You won’t have to. Just…please don’t be mad, we’re having a good time and it’s Jude’s birthday.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “I’m not _mad_. And anyway, Lina lives downtown and Jude lives in Sherman Oaks. I don’t want you driving all over town. It’s going to be late and your hood is sketchy,” Quinn teased. But in actuality, Rachel’s neighborhood was kind of sketchy.

“It’s okay,” Rachel said softly.

“It’s _not_ ,” Quinn said. “She always thinks we’re going to bail her out. She should have watched how much she drank!”

“Don’t get mad,” Rachel pleaded again. “We’re supposed to have fun tonight. I’ll take Lina home first and then drop Jude off.”

“I’m not mad,” Quinn denied, but actually she was mad, she just didn’t want Rachel to know because Rachel worked so hard at being the peacekeeper of the group. But she was mad because she was tired of having to drive Lina home and then having Lina text her the next morning to thank her and then ask could she please swing by to pick her up so she could pick up her car? And sure, Rachel could drive Lina home, but that would mean Rachel would be schlepping all over town, and maybe Rachel didn’t mind doing it, but Quinn minded for her. And God, Quinn loved the hell out of Lina, they were friends after all, but Lina bugged the living hell out of her, too. “But then you have to backtrack to Hollywood! It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Quinn, it’s _okay_.”

Quinn sighed. “Yeah, I know.” Quinn glanced over just a few feet away where the other six were still talking and laughing amongst themselves. “You’re right, it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll take Lina home.”

“But--”

“It’s okay, Rach. You shouldn’t have to drive further than you need to.”

“No,” Rachel said. “You’ve had a tough day today and I don’t mind taking Lina home. Let me, okay?”

“Rachel, I live closer to--”

Rachel reached out to squeeze Quinn’s hand. “I’ll do it, okay? I don’t mind at all, and you’re tired, and she might make you explode.” She looked pleadingly at Quinn. “It’s Jude’s birthday,” she said softly. “Don’t be upset.”

Quinn sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’m not upset okay? I just wish that she’d drink a few and then _stop_.” She sighed. “Okay, please take her home,” she said grudgingly, because it had, in fact, been a tough day and maybe the stressors at work were making her grumpier and more resentful than usual. _Maybe_. And it was highly possible that if she had to drive Lina home, she might somehow make Lina cry. And it was so sweetly typical of Rachel to volunteer even though it was way out of her way and almost convenient for Quinn to take Lina home, it was just that Quinn was afraid she’d explode at Lina. It was still painful to see Lina making a fucking fool out of herself in a bar on someone else’s birthday. “But you have to text me the _second_ you’re safe in your apartment. Don’t forget like you _always_ do.”

Quinn felt like an asshole because Rachel didn’t have her own parking space in her sketchy ass neighborhood and God only knew what calamites could befall Rachel just walking from her car to her front door. But Quinn was _really_ tired and she didn’t want to put up with Lina, and if Rachel took Lina home, it meant that Quinn could cut out a little earlier if she wanted to.

“I won’t this time,” Rachel swore solemnly. “I promise.”

They shared a look and a smile until their friend, Jessica piped in.

“Look at the way they look at each other! They’re totally lesbian for each other.”

Rachel blushed and ducked her head.

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she scoffed. “You guys are just mad we like each other better than we like you guys.”

Rachel chuckled and shared a shy smile with Quinn. “Yeah.”

The others rolled their eyes and began groaning.

“Oh, here we go again,” Jessica said, waving her hands in the air near shoulders. “The Rachel and Quinn show.”

Judy sighed. “Let those two be off in some corner somewhere, they only understand each other.”

“Yeah, Rachel,” Lina called out nasally. “Just sit there hang out with Quinn in your own little world because…” she made air quotes. “She under--”

Everyone chimed in unison. “Understands you!” they called out, imitating something Rachel had said on occasion.

Rachel sighed. “Shut up, all of you,” she said good-naturedly, but her cheeks were tinged with pink

“Whatever,” Quinn said. “You guys are just jealous because we’re awesome.”

The others immediately began to groan and began to enumerate the ways in which Quinn and Rachel were emphatically _not_ awesome, but even that was in good fun, because the list included things like, ‘Rachel’s baby hands,’ ‘Rachel’s freakishly long legs relative to her midget height,’ ‘Quinn’s blinding blondness’ and ‘Quinn’s Barbie-like status.’

Rachel and Quinn shared a grin and Quinn leaned in to whisper in Rachel’s ear. She pointed at their friends. “That, right there, is the reason why you’re my favorite,” she said, sniffing with affectionate disdain toward their friends.

Rachel grinned at her. “You’re my favorite, too.”

“See what I mean!” Jessica practically bellowed, pointing at them. “Lesbian for each other!”

Rachel’s cheeks were crimson as practically everyone within earshot turned to look at her and Quinn. She crossed her arms in front of herself and sunk down deeper into the seat as people laughed. Quinn scowled.

The next day, Quinn hatched her plan.

\--

It’s not that Quinn resented Jessica claiming that she and Rachel were “so lesbian” for one another, because honestly, objectively, she knew a _lot_ of people at work had their suspicions, and that was okay with her. Rachel was married and Quinn had a boyfriend, so the blonde was mainly irritated that people would think she and Rachel were the cheating types. They were good friends and they were affectionate with one another, did that mean people had to assume they were carrying on some torrid affair?

Part of it had to do with the fact that their group-- she, Rachel, Judy, Jessica, Sarah, Helena, Lina and Grace worked in close quarters-- _way_ too close quarters. The eight of them shared a large room that was separated from the rest of the office proper because most of the confidential client files were kept in their file cabinets. The room had eight desks set up in pods, so that there were two desks against the back wall, looking out of a window, two desks facing the door and then four desks in the middle, two on the left and two on the right. These desks were situated so that the occupants sat across from one another. Quinn and Rachel had sat across from one another for three years, and it was this arrangement that rapidly built their friendship.

The arrangement made it so that the eight of them were unusually close and familiar with one another relative to the rest of the office who didn’t have to work with coworkers in such proximity. They even had their own copy and fax machine, so the only reason to leave the room was to use the bathroom, go to lunch, leave or take a walk around the office. It also meant that once in a while, their personal business was broadcast around the room like when Grace scolded her son on the phone or Lina broke up with yet another boyfriend or when Sarah tried to plan a “vacation” that really turned out to be a boob job.

Rachel was the serious type at work-- over eager, overachiever, hard on herself and a perfectionist. She always went above and beyond. Normally, that would have been a turn-off because Quinn would have assumed that Rachel was just a kiss-ass, but that was just Rachel’s personality-- she was sincere to a fault and she was her own worst critic. Quinn took pride in her work, too, but she was prone to wanting to play and she could usually get Rachel to play, too. She flung rolled up pieces of paper, snapped rubber bands, made faces at Rachel while the brunette was on the telephone, that sort of thing. Rachel usually responded with a laugh and any time Rachel seemed sad, it was always gratifying to make Rachel laugh, because God, if that girl wasn’t smiling or laughing, she had a face that could look _so_ sad.

It worked both ways because whenever she was in a bad mood, she could always count on Rachel to cheer her up, whether it was by sticking a gold star sticker on Quinn’s desk (Quinn had a collection of those in her desk drawer), or maybe with a yellow Post-it with affectionate messages like “I love you venti” (for those days when she was genuinely depressed but had no idea why) or “even though you smell like a monkey, I love you anyway” (for those days when she was just moody and probably PMSing) or simply, “well, *I* like you” (for those days when Quinn was upset about something specific). Then Rachel would message her over the AIM (which they weren’t supposed to have downloaded, but whatever) and ask if she wanted to get coffee, and they’d walk to the Starbucks across the street and Rachel would buy her a latte and they’d walk around the block for a little bit until Quinn felt better.

So Quinn kind of understood why their friends made jokes at their expense-- she really did. She could readily admit that sometimes she and Rachel could seem like a cross between those girls in _Mean Girls_ and those girls in _Heavenly Creatures_ \-- she could admit that! But God, why did their friends have to make fun of them _so_ much? Sometimes it got a little mean, and it actually hurt her feelings, even though she knew no one _intended_ to hurt her feelings, or Rachel’s for that matter.

The truth was, Quinn once harbored a small crush on Rachel. It didn’t happen right away, they were friends for a while when Quinn realized that spending time with Rachel was more appealing to her than spending time with Dan. But Quinn thought that was normal--back thenm her friendship with Rachel was new and exciting, they had a lot in common and Rachel was so sweet to her, it was hard not to be enthralled with the newness of their friendship. But she found herself eager to come to work because she’d get to see Rachel. And it really wasn’t a physical attraction, although she thought Rachel was so beautiful. It was more about who Rachel was as a person. The more she got to know Rachel, the more it was like, _well, why wouldn’t you have a crush on her_ , because Rachel was nice and sweet with a hilarious sense of humor and she was a really good friend. She was the give-you-the-shirt-off-her-back sort of friend and Quinn never had many of those. So it wasn’t that she wanted to sleep with Rachel, because actually, she didn’t. It was more that when she came to work, she was always happy to take her seat across from Rachel. Eventually, the excitement dissipated, the crush went away but what was left was even better because it was friendship-- pure and simple.

So the idea of dating Rachel wasn’t so shocking in and of itself. Sometimes, when Quinn thought about it, she thought that if things had been just a little different, she and Rachel would have dated. And it wouldn’t have to be _that_ different, like if one of them had been a guy or something. It would have been something as basic as one or both of them actually being _single_ when they first met. But neither of them were single when they first met, and so, of course dating was out of the question.

The idea of dating Rachel, or anyone woman for that matter, wasn’t all that shocking, at least in the abstract. Quinn quasi-dated two women in college, and didn’t get very far with either of them-- it was mainly some drunken groping and kissing after embarrassingly awkward dates. That was the depths of her experience with women. She told Rachel this, and Rachel blushed and admitted that once, before she married him, she had a threesome with Nick and another girl so it wasn’t like it was totally out of Rachel’s realm of experience either.

There were some days when Quinn thought Rachel may have harbored a crush on her back, it was just that neither of them were in a place where they would have acted on it, and maybe neither of them would have wanted to, because it would have been ill-advised anyway since they worked together.

Every once in a while she and Rachel had talked about what it would have been like if they’d ever dated. The conversation was always very blasé, like it was totally normal to discuss that sort of thing, and when she talked about it with Rachel, it didn’t feel weird or anything. After all, Rachel was married and she had a boyfriend, where was the harm?

But sometimes when Quinn got home, she’d replay the events of the day or evening in her head and she’d wonder if girls who were just friends ever talked about what it would have been like if they’d dated. Was that typical? Was that normal? They were close, _extremely_ close, but Quinn wasn’t sure if they were closer than other women friends who were ostensibly straight. But Quinn was fairly certain the other girls didn’t talk about what it would have been like if, hypothetically, they dated each other, and she and Rachel had talked about that on more than one occasion If women were friends for long enough, was that the sort of thing that came up in conversation? Quinn wasn’t sure because she didn’t have a lot of female friends and she was fairly certain that if she’d ever asked that question to Brittany, Santana would have shanked her.

But one night, Quinn couldn’t help but ask it seriously.

“If things had been different, do you think we would have?” Quinn asked. “Seriously. Don’t joke and say we would have killed each other. Do you think we would have dated?”

Rachel stared for a moment. “Of course,” Rachel said simply. “Of course we would have. But it would have been a disaster.”

Quinn grinned. “Definitely.”

Except Quinn wasn’t sure. She thought it was _probably_ true. She and Rachel were too alike in some ways and too different in others. But they made great friends though and so Quinn thought maybe it wouldn’t have been such a disaster after all. Not that they’d ever get the chance to find out.

They were friends, and that was the most important thing. But she kind of resented that their friendship made them a target for their friends, no matter how good-natured the teasing was.

So what if they laughed at the same stupid things? So what if she joked around with Rachel like they were twelve, rather than the twenty-five they actually were? Quinn had spent much of her life being serious and behaving serious and taking things seriously. Sometimes, it was nice to have someone she could just be a goofball with. It’s not like they sat around making fart jokes or something. It was more like, Rachel would read an article about some hillbilly getting arrested for operating a tractor while naked _and_ drunk and for the rest of the day uttering the word “tractor” would make them both laugh-- was that so unreasonable? But whenever they did something like that, they got teased for it relentlessly with comments like “only Rachel and Quinn would laugh like that” and once the teasing got really extreme, Rachel always got really quiet and she didn’t talk to try to talk to anyone other than Quinn, like she was just waiting to be smacked down or something.

So Quinn decided that she and Rachel should get their friends back.

Quinn thought it would be hilarious to fake secretly date Rachel and then stage a dramatic breakup on April Fools’ Day, and she thought Rachel would go along with it readily, because it was just the kind of thing that Rachel would find kind of funny. It would be a big fuck-you to their friends and would hopefully stop the lesbian insinuations and the mocking.

She presented the plan to Rachel over one of their weekly Thursday night dinner and drinks. It was always just the two of them and it gave them a chance to vent about work, talk about their friends and complain about the men they were living with.

“I’m down,” Rachel said, agreeing to it immediately with an impish grin. “They’d _so_ fall for it.”

They weren’t quite sure how to pull it off, because it was kind of a hard sell-- how do two people start to fake secretly date? It was one thing to pretend to date if you were open about it. But they were pretending to _secretly_ date, and so that made it even harder because not only did they have to pretend they were secretly dating, but they also had to pretend like they wanted to cover it up, when really, they wanted to make their friends suspicious. But they were committed to the idea.

“I hope they totally freak out,” Quinn said enthusiastically, rubbing her hands together gleefully. “I am so tired of them making fun of us for bullshit.”

Rachel shrugged. She reached out to pinch Quinn’s nose. “It’s cute how you get so mad at how much they make fun of us.”

Quinn swatted at Rachel’s hand, but she’d long given up complaining when Rachel did that. And anyway, she kind of liked it when Rachel did, because generally, it meant that Rachel was in a good mood, and as a general rule, Quinn liked it when her friends were in good moods. “Well, I really want to get Jess back, saying we’re so lesbian for each other,” Quinn said scoffing, “as if we’d ever date.”

Rachel looked at Quinn and pouted. “I’m a little insulted that the prospect of dating me is so revolting for you. What is so wrong with me that being my bitch is so horrifying for you?”

“Okay, _first_ of all, they’re such assholes about it.”

“I know,” Rachel agreed. “But they’re our friends and they love us. And we love them.”

Quinn grinned and sighed in exasperation. “But we still like each other better than we like them.”

“Oh, God. Absolutely,” Rachel agreed. She gave Quinn a wide smile and held her fist out for Quinn to bump. “You and me, we could take all of them.”

“ _Totally_ ,” Quinn said, bumping Rachel’s fist with her own. “Oh, and _secondly_ , before you interrupted me, I thought we agreed that if we ever dated, _you’d_ be my bitch.”

Rachel looked at her in askance. “Oh please! If anything, I think we agreed that you would be my bitch.”

“I agreed to nothing!” Quinn snapped. “Are you kidding me?” Quinn asked, incredulously. “Have you met yourself? You’re like, four feet eleven!”

“I’m five foot two,” Rachel yelped. “You’re only like, three inches taller than me.”

Quinn snorted. “Why won’t we stand up and test that out?”

“Fine!”

“Take off your heels first.”

Rachel huffed and crossed her arms. “The floor is filthy and unsanitary, I refuse to put my bare feet on them.”

Quinn bit her lip in amusement. “Sure.”

Rachel gave her a dirty look. “I hate it when you patronize me,” she complained. “I think the only thing we do agree on is that if we’d ever dated, it would have been a disaster. We would have _killed_ each other.”

“I think we would have been good together,” Quinn said. “That is, until, you’d break my heart.”

Rachel looked outraged. “Why do you keep saying that? Nothing in our experience together would lead anyone to believe that I’d break your heart. If anything it would be the other way around.”

Quinn shook her head. “I thought we agreed about this. You’d drive me to domestic violence because you’d annoy the shit out of me, but you’d still be the one to break my heart.”

Rachel rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I agreed to nothing.”

“It doesn’t matter though, I guess,” Quinn said. “It’s moot. You were married and I had Dan when we met, so it’s all moot. Although, it’s so weird how we grew up, like, miles away from each other, we both went to UCLA, graduated the same year and we still didn’t meet until we stated working together,” Quinn commented. “I mean, it’s so weird.”

Rachel smiled. “I guess we were just meant to meet later in life than earlier.”

“Yeah,” Quinn agreed with a smile. “It’s just, I kind of get that why we never met in college. The school is huge and any of the classes we would have shared were those huge survey classes. But our high schools were such rivals, you’d think we would have met sooner.”

Rachel shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah.”

Quinn gazed at Rachel for a long moment and then decided to change the subject. For whatever reason, the subject of high school and Rachel’s upbringing in Ohio was an uneasy one. The brunette wasn’t exactly an open book, but wasn’t super private, either, the way their friend, Helena was. Rachel talked about her life-- her relationship with her husband, going out with her friends (the ones who weren’t also her coworkers), her plans for the evening, what college had been like, that sort of thing.

But when it came to her childhood, her parents, high school or her life before she came to LA, Rachel was always reluctant. She wasn’t just reluctant, she was downright evasive and the subject clearly made her sad, so as curious as Quinn was, and had been for three years now, Quinn kept her distance from that subject. And anyway, that suited Quinn just fine because she wasn’t particularly fond of thinking about _her_ high school experience or her life before she came to LA, either. She’d had a great childhood, at least, while she’d gone through it, but when she looked back on it in retrospect, it hurt her to think about all the things she’d lost and how her parents weren’t who she thought they were.

One of the best things about her friendship with Rachel was that as close as they were and as much as they loved each other, they didn’t ask for a lot of detail that the other one didn’t want to provide. When Rachel seemed uncomfortable and evasive about talking about her family or her life before she came to LA, Quinn picked up on it and respected that by not bringing up those subjects. Quinn herself was uncomfortable about talking about her family or her life before she came to LA, and so Rachel didn’t bring up those things. It worked for them.

The first year they worked together, everyone else was spending Thanksgiving with their families, since that was what families did together on Thanksgiving. Dan was going home to be with his family, and although he invited her along, they hadn’t dated long enough for her to want to accept an invitation to a family event like Thanksgiving.

She wasn’t going to go home-- she hadn’t been home in _so_ long and she certainly wasn’t going to go home for Thanksgiving. She left home as soon as she could-- once she got pregnant and brought shame on her parents and her family, it was like all the love her parents had for her completely drained. She’d been close to her mother, but she’d been a daddy’s girl from birth. But she got pregnant and her parents could never look at her the same way. Even after she gave up her baby, her parents could never forgive. She’d fallen in love with her baby girl before she was even born, but she gave her daughter up because she thought somehow, her parents would love her again. Foolishly, she thought that because her parents let her come back after kicking her out, they’d be willing to love her again, too. But really, the only reason they let her back was because she was a minor and they would have called even more attention to themselves if they’d let her go into foster care or something. She thought maybe if her parents weren’t woken up in the middle of the night by a baby’s cries, they’d forgive her, or maybe even forget, but it never happened. She never felt loved by them again, she knew she was only barely tolerated.

So she cut her losses and ran--the moment she could get away, that’s exactly what she did. She turned 18 a couple days after she graduated from high school, and she said goodbye to her parents and sister, hugged Santana and Brittany and gave Finn and Puck awkward cheek kisses. Then she left for UCLA with no intentions of ever going back to Ohio.

So far, she hadn’t. There weren’t many major holidays that really emphasized family other than Thanksgiving and Christmas, and a lot of college kids didn’t go home for Thanksgiving if home was too far away. The dorm was open on Thanksgiving, but it was closed during Winter Break, but Quinn always found a place to stay during that time. After a couple years in the dorms, she moved into her own apartment and didn’t have to worry about finding a place to stay when the dorms were closed. Right after college, she found a job and met Rachel, who coincidentally, came from a neighboring town in Ohio and was also fresh out of UCLA. How they’d never met before then was confounding and bizarre to Quinn, but Rachel always said simply, ‘maybe we were just meant to meet later in life than earlier.’

They met in the summer, just a few weeks after they’d graduated from UCLA. Quinn had just turned 22 and Rachel was a few weeks away from her 22nd birthday. They’d become fast friends and by the November of that year, Quinn thought that Rachel was just about the best thing about working there. Quinn _wanted_ the job, of course, but Rachel was the definite bright spot.

By Thanksgiving, they were close, but not _that_ close. They were well on their way, but it was still too early, and it wasn’t like in college where you hung out on beds in dorm rooms and crap like that. This was work, and while they’d each determined the other was trustworthy, the friendship was still new. Quinn thought she was going to spend Thanksgiving alone, but then Lina asked Quinn about her plans and Quinn kind of shrugged and said she had nothing special planned and a few minutes later, Rachel sent her an email asking if Quinn wanted to come over on Thanksgiving. It turned out that Rachel wasn’t going home to Ohio for Thanksgiving, and she wasn’t going to go with Nick to spend it with his family in Minnesota.

They spent that entire Thanksgiving weekend alone together. Rachel explained that her husband’s entire family loathed her, and she didn’t want him to miss out on any family holidays and resent her for it, but she didn’t want to sit through an entire holiday weekend where Nick’s whole family was mean to her. So they spent the holiday weekend together, because really, who wanted to spend it alone? And it wasn’t anything special-- a roast chicken from the supermarket with some prewashed bagged salad and some Mrs. Cubison’s stuffing. But it was still fun and they got drunk and watched dumb TV movies on the ABC Family channel. But they had so much fun and they talked so much, Quinn knew that no matter how much she’d grow to love her coworkers, Rachel would always be the one she loved best.

And indeed, that was exactly what happened.  
  
At Christmas, it was the same thing. Dan spent it with his family and invited Quinn, but Quinn still believed the relationship was too new. Nick went home again to Minnesota and Rachel stayed behind. “They don’t want me there,” Rachel explained simply when Quinn asked why Rachel didn’t just go. “I’m Jewish, so what the hell do I care about Christmas?” Rachel added.

“Well, how do you know they don’t want you there?” Quinn asked.

“Because two years ago, his sister told me, ‘we don’t want you here,’” Rachel admitted wryly.

“Why don’t you just spend it with your family?” Quinn asked.

Rachel paused for a long moment and never answered the question. “Hey,” she said. “I have some tequila we brought back from Mexico. Want to open it?”

“Sure,” Quinn said.

It was almost two years later Quinn found out that the reason Rachel couldn’t spend the holidays with her family was that she didn’t have any family to spend it with. There was no story that went with it. One day, the eight of them happened to be in the office on a Friday waiting for the clock to hit 5pm and it turned into a discussion on family. Rachel didn’t offer any information, but Jessica asked her directly and Rachel simply shrugged. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“Well, what about your parents, what do they do?”

“My parents are gone,” Rachel said, her voice very frank. It wavered ever so slightly, but her expression was cold and hard and so no one ever asked her about it again.

Later, Quinn checked in with Rachel just to make sure the brunette was okay. She’d felt sort of hurt because they’d talked about family, at least, in the abstract, and maybe that should have tipped Quinn off because most people were only that reluctant to talk about family when it was something pretty bad. But Quinn thought that after nearly two years of knowing each other, that sort of thing should have come up.

She’d wanted to say something about it, but Rachel’s eyes were darker and sadder than she’d ever seen them and so instead of asking Rachel ‘why didn’t you ever tell me?’ all she asked was ‘are you okay?’ Rachel looked at her with such relief and gratitude, and they went and got a drink, even though it was date night and Rachel had a standing date with her husband and Quinn had plans with Dan. One drink led into six and Quinn found herself telling Rachel the story of her baby and her continued estrangement from her parents. Rachel looked at her sympathetically, leaned in and hugged her. “You,” Rachel declared, “will always have a standing date with me on all holidays from Thanksgiving and Christmas to Cinco de Mayo and Arbor Day.”

It was more than her own damn family had ever offered her.

So did she love Rachel? Absolutely. Did it bug the living shit out of her when anyone other than her made fun of Rachel? Absolutely. Did she swear revenge on anyone who hurt Rachel, even if it was a mutual friend or group of friends? Of course.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** April Fools  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R, maybe  
**Length:** 9000  
**Spoilers:**. Through Sectionals.  
**Summary:** An April Fools’ joke stops being a joke. AU future fic, I’d classify this as angsty romantic comedy.

* * *

 

It really was kind of a hard sell, because how do you fake secret date?

But they did their best to plant the seeds of suspicion in their friends’ heads anyway. They were physically affectionate with one another, so they were just _extra_ affectionate with one another. They pretended to have furtive conversations by talking and then abruptly stopping anytime someone else came into the room. They giggled a lot while they were together.

But they took it slow. They didn’t want to bombard everyone with all kinds of craziness at once, because that would arouse suspicion that they were plotting something. So they decided on subtlety first and then slowly taking it up by notches. It was how they always behaved with each other, just more extreme.

In all honesty, it was fun to do, at least, Rachel thought so. Quinn was tall (only privately could Rachel admit that there was a substantial height difference between them, particularly when she was wearing flats, an admittedly rare occurrence, and Quinn was wearing heels) and Rachel liked the height difference. There was something comforting in it. Whenever they walked next to each other and Quinn took her arms and Rachel could brush up against Quinn’s body, the difference in height was just… _comforting_. Rachel thought it was because her husband, Nick, was so tall. And her high school boyfriend, Mike, had been tall and lanky. Rachel supposed she just liked people who were a lot taller than her.

She and Quinn took their usual playfulness up a notch. It didn’t matter how old she got, or how tedious the job was or how many times she’d done the function, Rachel was still the kind of person who liked to work when she was supposed to work and liked to play when she was supposed to play. She’d always had a hard time taking it easy. When she was in school, she was aggressive about being in school. When she worked, she was aggressive about being at work. It was just who she was. But Quinn could always get her to play.

So Rachel found herself being more playful with Quinn than usual. Since they sat across from each other and their desks shared a tiny half-wall, they made a lot of eye contact throughout the day. Usually, they just made faces at one another or would throw the occasional paper clip or paper airplane at one another. But Rachel found herself making a goal with both hands, her index fingers and her thumbs making ‘L’s. Quinn would fling a balled up Post-it, trying to score. And she found herself opening her mouth wide so that Quinn could toss in a peanut from the trail mix they shared. The others seemed irritated and at least one of them would call out “seriously, what is up with you guys?” but Rachel just exchanged a grin with Quinn and then they’d both laugh.

They ducked out to eat lunch together a lot, too. It’s not that the eight of them always ate lunch together-- typically at least half of them were out of the office at any given time assisting clients. But when all of them _were_ in the office together, it was either crazy fun or it would get to be overwhelming for Rachel. She loved those girls, she really did. She didn’t have any family left, Nick’s family hated her and she had friends but very few truly _close_ friends and lot of the truly close friends she did have were far away.

So it was nice for Rachel to come to work with people she really cared about and who really seemed to care about her. But Quinn was honestly her favorite one, and sometimes, Rachel just liked having Quinn to herself because Quinn made fun of her sometimes, but Rachel had long learned that Quinn never meant it, and Rachel hadn’t quite figured out when the other girls were serious and when they meant it when they made fun of her or were mean to her.

Besides, Rachel had never been particularly adept at creating a good impression on a _group_ of people. She was honestly the kind of person who did better one-on-one. She didn’t become fast friends with all the girls like Quinn had-- she’d won them over one at a time. So it kind of suited Rachel just to hang out with Quinn for lunch, rather than having to deal with all the other girls.

Ducking out to have lunch together, just the two of them, or rejecting the other girls’ offers of lunch was probably one of the biggest things to rouse the suspicions of the other girls. Rachel could see that it raised a few eyebrows.

So did the fact that they were more affectionate with one another than usual.

One day, Quinn called her over to show her the seating chart at the Arclight theater for the movie they were planning on seeing together. The chart was on the blonde’s computer screen and Rachel hovered next to Quinn’s desk when suddenly the blonde wrapped pulled Rachel into her lap, and even Rachel was startled because they’d shared chairs at bars when there weren’t enough to go around and they’d practically sat in each other’s lap in cramped bar booths or park benches, but they’d never sat in each other’s lap for no reason. Then she felt one of Quinn’s arms wrap around her, the blonde’s hand on Rachel’s stomach and Quinn’s other hand moved the mouse around.

Out of the corner of Rachel’s eye, she could see Helena was the only one who was paying attention and even then, all Helena did was raise an eyebrow. Helena, was quiet and thoughtful, mellow but observant, and she’d been the one to just _notice_ things. But it sucked because Helena was quiet by nature and was the secret keeper in the group, and so Helena would be the least likely to tell anyone if she discovered or suspected something. She was the least fun to fool because she was the least prone to gossiping. The whole point was that they _wanted_ their friends to talk. Rachel found herself wishing that Jessica were more observant, because Jessica was a shameless gossip-- although her gossip was often wrong, and so people tended to take what she said with a grain of salt.

“I’ll buy the tickets this time, okay?” Quinn asked.

“Okay,” Rachel said. She got up and she felt Quinn gently pat her butt, which was nothing unusual-- they all did that to one another, not just she and Quinn. But Rachel found herself blushing because somehow, it felt different this time.

But when Rachel took the few steps back to her desk, she saw that Lina had seen her sitting in Quinn’s lap and saw Quinn pat her butt. Rachel ducked her head and reflexively blushed, because she was a little embarrassed. But once she got back to her seat, she was pleased that their little plan was working.

\--

The plan seemed to be working, because just like she and Quinn deliberately stopped talking whenever anyone else came into the room, any time she or Quinn would come into the room, conversation stopped, too. Their friends were talking about them, and it was kind of annoying how reliable they were about that sort of thing.

Rachel and Quinn cackled about it over one of their regular Thursday night dinner and drinks night.

“They’re totally suspicious,” Rachel said with a laugh. “Especially Hel, except she’d never say anything.”

“I know, but Jessica totally spread it around to _everyone_ , they all think we’re secretly dating.”

Rachel beamed at Quinn and held her hand up. Quinn slapped her hand against Rachel’s and she held Rachel’s hand for a moment, palm to palm, fingers tight.

“You’re awesome,” Quinn said sincerely.

Rachel’s grin was wide. “ _We’re_ awesome.”

Quinn’s phone went off to announce a text message. She grabbed it and rolled her eyes when she saw the text message from Dan. “He’s asking me where I am.” She grimaced. “What is wrong with him? It’s Thursday! It’s _our_ regular thing.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said sardonically. “Imagine his gall wanting to know where you are when you don’t come home from work!”

“You know what I mean! And hello, it’s _Thursday_!” She punched the keys on her cell phone, reminding Dan that it was Thursday and therefore her regular night with Rachel.

Rachel smiled crookedly. “Maybe he just forgot, don’t be so mean. I don’t think it’s so unreasonable for him to want to know where you are. I mean, you guys live together.”

Quinn huffed. “I need to get my own place. I wasn’t ready to move in with him.”

“You’ve been living with him for two years.”

“It’s only because two years ago--”

“I know,” Rachel interrupted. “They sold your building to convert into condos, blah blah blah, so you moved in and it was supposed to be temporary blah blah blah. Quinn, if you _really_ wanted to leave, you would have left already. Just admit you love him and you’re exactly where you want to be.”

When Rachel was younger, she thought that she’d have a serious relationship by the time she was 25, but she didn’t think she’d be married. She just didn’t see it as a necessity, and her own fathers had never been able to get married, but they had been in love until the day they died. They had their fair share of problems, of course, and actually, they’d been fighting the morning they died, but Rachel had enough perspective now to realize that arguing didn’t mean the relationship was over.

But she didn’t think she’d be the girl who’d date a guy at eighteen, marry him at twenty and still be married to him by twenty-five. And there were times when she felt like maybe she married too young. Before Nick, she’d only had one other boyfriend, and that was her high school boyfriend, Mike, who was sweetly quiet but incredibly talented. She’d cheated on Nick, when she was eighteen, when they first started dating, and it was more than one time, but it was with the same person. Sometimes she regretted that she didn’t have more experience or dated more, but Nick loved her and she loved Nick. Sometimes she was worried her marriage wouldn’t work out and she’d be divorced before she was thirty and lose the only family she had left.  
But what she knew was that in spite of all her concerns and all her worries, she was where she wanted to be, so she was pretty sure Quinn was exactly where she wanted to be, too, despite all of the blonde’s vociferous complaints about Dan.

“I never said I didn’t love him,” Quinn exclaimed. “Of course I love him. I _adore_ him. He’s such a good guy and I know he loves me. But he’s so suffocating. He just wants to talk about _everything_ and he wants to do it all the time. I can’t breathe! Everything I do, he thinks I want to break up with him. He doesn’t understand that sometimes I need some space from him. Come on, you know how it is! You’re the same way I am! You always complain when Nick gets needy with you.”

“Well,” Rachel said quietly. “I’m not easy to be with.”

“That’s true,” Quinn joked.

“Yeah,” Rachel said with a sigh.

Quinn realized then that Rachel wasn’t just being self-deprecating, but still a little jokey when she talked about her relationship with Nick. This was Rachel being _serious_ about not being easy to be with, this was one of those times when Rachel wasn’t joking about how hard she was, and how much Nick put up with. This was one of those times when Rachel was in one of those awful, somber, self-hating moods, the ones that Quinn had no idea Rachel was in until Rachel said a comment like that.

“Hey,” Quinn said. “You’re not hard to be with,” she said. “You’re not easy,” she added, because if she didn’t concede that point, Rachel would simply scoff and tell Quinn that she didn’t know what she was really talking about. “But you don’t cheat on him, you always tell him if you’re going to be late, you’re not needy, you don’t try to keep track of his every movement. I mean, what would he have to complain about, you know? You’re not easy, but you’re not hard.”

Rachel cracked a small smile. “But you said that if you’d met him first, you’d like him better and I’d just be his annoying wife.”

“That’s still true,” Quinn said with a grin. “But I did meet you first and I love the living shit out of you.”

Rachel laughed. “I love the living shit out of you, too,” she said warmly. She smiled fondly at Quinn. “I wouldn’t have survived working in that hellhole without you, you know. I would have quit a long time ago.”

Quinn smiled. “Same here.” She sighed. “What awful life choices did we make to get us to work in that place?”

They actually did love their jobs because they actually felt like they helped people. It was just that the pay was crap and the stress was high and sometimes it got to them.

Rachel’s smile was sad, tight. “Not sure,” she said softly.

“What would you be doing if you weren’t working with us?” Quinn asked. It wasn’t the first she’d asked, and Rachel’s answer was always the same.

Again, Rachel’s smile was sad, tight. “I don’t know,” she said evenly. “It’s not like I have any talents or anything. Maybe bartending. Or retail. Whatever.”

Quinn nodded. “Bartending sounds good.”

Quinn ordered another round of drinks and whatever dark mood Rachel seemed to be in lifted in a haze of alcohol. Sometimes, when it came to Rachel, it felt like she cared too much. It wasn’t a bad thing, it just felt like maybe she cared too much.

\--

Rachel liked to believe that most of the time, most people were where they wanted to be, even if they were complaining about it. She, Quinn and the rest of their coworkers worked with victims of human trafficking to get their lives back together, so she was readily aware that sometimes, people were definitely _not_ where they wanted to be, but she thought in most normal circumstances-- circumstances like hers, most people were where they wanted to be, or else they’d do something about it.

Her sixteen year old self would have been incredulous at the way her life was now, which Rachel thought was the biggest problem with herself at that age. She’d been too myopic, too singularly focused on achieving fame and glory until she got a big, fat wake-up call that proved to her how empty all that was and how her ambition warped her into someone she didn’t like.

Sometimes, she still wanted that life. She wanted it desperately. But the only place she found she could sing was in the shower or in the car, and always by herself. She couldn’t even handle karaoke because she just _knew_ she’d enjoy the attention too much and she never wanted to go back to being that girl again. If she’d had the life she wanted-- if she were the big Broadway star with her name in bright lights and Playbills, she just _knew_ she’d would have been one of those actresses who were really full of it. She would have gotten inebriated with the fame. She just knew. And she didn’t want to be like that.

It really spoke to how supportive her fathers had been-- both her fathers had been attorneys, but not the kind of soul-sucking corporate attorneys who cared only about billable hours. Her fathers had been the pro-bono, civil rights type of lawyers and it didn’t matter what the cause was. If it was just, they threw their support behind it. They were true believers in the idea that injustice anywhere was a threat to justice everywhere.

They didn’t really understand why she cared more about singing, dancing and acting more than she cared about the causes they championed. She believed in those things, too, of course, it was just that her career in entertainment was more important to her. But even though they didn’t _get_ it, they did get that it was important to her. Other parents would have tried to shape her into what they wanted her to be, but her fathers just let her be who she wanted to be. She was all about dance, piano and voice lessons and they _let_ her be.

Looking back on it as an adult, she appreciated that _so_ much, especially now that her parents were gone. She wished that she could have been a better person with their support instead of being a single-minded jerk. But she was trying to make up for that now. As supportive as her fathers were, Rachel knew they would have been more pleased if she were less focused on her singing career and more focused on helping other people. But they just loved her and accepted her, no matter what, even if they didn’t agree with her.

They died while she was still in high school, and it felt sort of obvious, but that day changed her life completely. She had to face what she’d become and she didn’t like it, and she wanted to be better. Not just for herself, but for her dads, too.

She was trying to help people now. She did it for a living, and sometimes, it was hard because God, the things she heard, she never could have imagined, not in a million years. And she wasn’t sure if she really liked it, because she wasn’t sure if this job was really in her nature. But she’d been doing it for three years and she met some great people and maybe it wasn’t exactly what she wanted, but most of the time, like when she and Quinn were exchanging prohibited IMs even though they were maybe five feet apart from each other, she thought she was exactly where she wanted to be.

She was lost in thoughts of who she used to be, who she wanted to be, and her lost parents when Outlook announced to her that she had an email and it was from Quinn.

 _You look like you just smelled something terrible. You okay_?

Rachel couldn’t help but laugh, because Quinn always had a way of being mocking and concerned at the same time. Rachel hit reply to type back.

_The awful thing I’m smelling is **you** , Fabray. I’m okay, thanks._

Moments later, there was another email from Quinn.

_Uh, no. The awful thing you’re smelling is your upper lip. Seriously though, are you okay?_

Rachel couldn’t help it. She shrieked in outrage and amusement and burst into laughter. She grabbed a stress ball she kept on her desk and threw it at Quinn who caught it and threw it back. Quinn was laughing as well and the blonde palmed her cheeks as she put her elbows on her desk to stare and smile softly at Rachel. Quinn raised one of her eyebrows, as if to ask, well, are you?

Rachel couldn’t resist beaming at Quinn, and suddenly, she felt that dark fog that was creeping up on her let up. And she was, she really was okay.

She didn’t realize that she was staring and smiling back at Quinn until Lina threw a paper clip that hit her on the cheek.

“Will you two just get a room already?”

Rachel blushed and she knew she should have been happy that Lina seemed to be suggesting that it was a serious prospect and not all jokey like she usually did because it meant that their plan was working and they were looking forward to the big April Fools’ “ha ha!” in two weeks. But God, she found herself _staring_ and _smiling_ at Quinn, and while that was good for their plan, it wasn’t something Rachel had actually _planned_ on doing.

Quinn cocked an eyebrow, a subtle gesture, and smiled.

But the only thing Rachel could think was, “oh, shit.”

\--

Whenever they talked about what it would have been like if they’d dated, it was always a nonchalant, casual conversation. It wasn’t anything heavy or uncomfortable, just very matter-of-fact, like, of course they would have dated. Rachel’s experience with women was limited to drunkenly making out with with a high school friend at a party when she was temporarily broken up with her boyfriend, Mike and a threesome with Nick and another woman, some skank Nick had once dated. Neither resulted in anything beyond that evening. When she confessed to Mike about making out with Tina, his eyes got wide and he sort of grinned and teased her about having an Asian fetish, but he wasn’t mad about it. The threesome had been Nick’s idea-- she’d confessed to cheating on him and agreeing to a threesome was sort of her way of apologizing for it. She’d been 18 at the time, and they’d barely started dating. The experience was okay-- it felt good, but it put strain on their relationship and they never did it again, which suited Rachel fine. It suited Nick fine, too. Truth be told, the night had been harder on him than on her, which was sort of surprising. It felt good, but the girl-- some ex-girlfriend of Nick’s had been such a skank that Rachel sort of chalked the experience up to being fun, but regrettable.

She’d remembered it felt good-- and it had. But it didn’t make her curious or want to start dating women or anything.

When she first met Quinn, she idly thought that if Quinn were a guy, her potential for cheating on Nick would have been sky-high, because Quinn was sweet to her and just seemed to get her. But the more she got to know Quinn, Rachel thought about how it really wouldn’t have mattered-- if Nick weren’t in the picture, she probably would have dated Quinn, for sure.

Granted Quinn had a boyfriend at the time, and Dan was a good guy. Nick was a cop and Dan was a fireman, so she and Quinn bonded over what it felt like to have their partners in such high-risk professions. But Rachel still thought that if she’d just been single, then she and Quinn would have given it a go. After all, she was _married_ to Nick and she took those vows seriously. Nick was the only family she had left now. Quinn complained about Dan all the time and as much as Rachel knew that most of Quinn’s complaints were pretty idle and the blonde actually loved Dan, Rachel suspected the relationship wouldn’t last. Quinn just seemed exhausted by it, and it wasn’t because Dan was a bad guy, or even that he was needy. It was just that they weren’t all that compatible.

They were just friends, and Quinn was _such_ a good friend to her. Most of her life, people just seemed to think she was high-strung, neurotic and weird. And admittedly, she was all of these things. Very few people had been willing to look past all that. She had Tina and Artie, her long-time good friends, although Rachel knew that the only reason she and Artie were still friends was because he was married to Tina. She had Mike, who, despite being her ex-boyfriend, was her best friend in the entire world. She didn’t get to see enough of him--he was a dancer who traveled a lot and had spent much of the last three years outside of the country. And she had Kurt, who never particularly liked her, but once her fathers died, he was kind to her and they bonded over dead parents. But all of those people lived outside of LA, and they were the people she was closest to. She had a few college friends, too, whom she loved. They were all good to her, but she’d never bonded so quickly with any of them the way she bonded with Quinn. And Quinn just seemed _really_ tolerant of her, never seemed irritated with her and Rachel knew full well that she could be a little annoying sometimes.

When they put their little plan to pull an April Fools’ joke on their friends, Rachel had been prepared to raise a few eyebrows-- that was the whole _point_. They’d fake secretly date, stage an emotional, dramatic, crying fight to freak out their friends and then point and laugh at them, Nelson Muntz style. The only way to do all that was to pull some behavior with Quinn that would raise some eyebrows, make people think that something was up between the two of them.

But Rachel had been completely unprepared for the way this little plan would make her feel. Her friendship with Quinn had always been so easy and comfortable and they were physically affectionate with one another, so it didn’t seem like such a big deal to take it up a notch. They’d always been comfortable with kissing each other on the cheek every now and then, linked arms when they walked to lunch, put their arms around each other , slapped each other’s butts, held hands, that sort of thing. It never _felt_ like such a big deal. But they were doing it even more now, and suddenly, it _did_ feel like a big deal.

Long before they decided to fake secretly date, there’d been a lot of moments, at least for Rachel, when she thought that something was going to happen between the two of them. Quinn would look at her a certain way and Rachel would look back and then realize she was holding her breath. One of them would always say or do something to break the mood and life would go back to normal. But now when that happened, it was getting harder to break the mood and their interactions felt…weighted.

Rachel realized that she was over her head, and she desperately wanted the 1st of April to come around so they could put the kibosh in this little joke. It was ridiculous how time seemed to simultaneously pass by so quickly and so slowly.

She just wanted life to go back to normal.

She wanted to call the whole thing off, because she just _knew_ that she was in over her head and that this joke that was meant to be on other people would somehow end up being on her. It was _already_ on her because she was looking at Quinn differently and she didn’t _want_ to look at Quinn differently. It was one thing to speculate about how disastrous it would have been if they dated over nachos and beer or over sushi and sake, and then go home to her husband who loved her. It was a whole other thing to have their hands all over each other (even if it was supposed to end up being a joke) and then end up feeling something as a result of it. She was in over her head, and a part of her wanted to call it off.

She wanted to just sit Quinn down and say that it was a bad idea, to call it off. But one, she was worried what Quinn would think if she asked. The blonde would ask why and Rachel would have to stammer through an excuse that would likely come off as vaguely unbelievable. And anyway, Quinn knew her way too well and could tell when she was lying. But two, and much more troubling, Rachel kind of _liked_ how it was between them right now and as much as she wanted to call it off, she liked it a little too much to really do it. It just seemed so much riskier to talk to Quinn about it. So she just kept her mouth shut and went with it, despite her misgivings. She knew in the end, the joke would be on her..  
\--

They were fake secret dating for a few weeks when Quinn remembered that months ago, she’d asked for five days of vacation, and that it was coming up.

“Crap,” Quinn said. “I forgot all about it.”

“How could you forget something like that?” Rachel demanded.

“I just, did okay?”

They bickered for a few minutes with Rachel being completely unable to understand how Quinn could have forgotten she was going on vacation and Quinn demanding what was so difficult to understand. Then Rachel became a little irate when she realized Quinn’s vacation in New York was coinciding with Rachel’s ex-boyfriend, Mike’s visit, which meant that Quinn wouldn’t be able to meet him. They bickered until Lina threw paper clips at each of them. “Take it outside, ladies. Then kiss and make up.”

‘Kiss and make up’-- they’d been told to kiss and make-up on numerous occasions when they bickered with one another, but now the way Lina said it…it felt like Lina was insinuating something, which, of course, was exactly what they wanted.

Quinn and Rachel grinned at one another.

Their April Fools’ joke was going to be killer and Quinn would be back in LA just in time to pull it off and bring it all together.  
\--

It was Rachel who dropped Quinn off at the airport. Not only because they were fake secret dating, but because Rachel would have done it anyway.

“I’ll miss you,” Rachel said.

Quinn grinned at her. “Are you saying that as my friend or as my secret fake girlfriend?”

Rachel laughed. “Both,” she said. “Have a safe trip. It sucks that you can’t meet Mike, but I know how much you need this break.”

Quinn smiled. “I’m disappointed about not being able to meet him, too. I would have asked him for dirt on you.”

Rachel’s smile dimmed. “Ha ha,” she said wryly.

Quinn bit the inside of her cheek and tried to lighten Rachel’s mood. God, Rachel was volatile sometimes. “I’ll bring you back a cheesy shot glass with I love New York emblazoned on it or something,” she promised.

“I’ll water the plant at your desk.”

Quinn sniffed. “You better. Not like last time when I went on a vacation and came back and my plant was dead.”

“I told you! I didn’t kill it!”

“What, so my plant killed itself?”

Rachel crossed her arms. “I’m not arguing about this with you again,” she huffed. “Get out of my car!”

Quinn laughed and got out. “I love you, too, jerk,”

Rachel turned her head and grinned. “Text me when you land, okay?” She popped the trunk so Quinn could get her bag out. “Have fun!”

Quinn nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “And I’ll miss you, too!”

She waved and Rachel waved back and then Quinn walked away.

As much as she wanted this vacation-- as much as she _needed_ this vacation and wanted to see Santana and Brittany again, she was a little sad about leaving Rachel. It was sort of ridiculous because they were just friends and she was only too eager to get away from Dan for a few days. But it was true, she was genuinely sad about leaving Rachel. If she was more sad about leaving her friend behind than her boyfriend, Quinn knew she had a problem. But she wasn’t sure what the bigger problem was-- that her relationship with her boyfriend was at the point, where _clearly_ , they’d either have to break up or go into couples’ therapy or that she’d come to care for Rachel so much that five days away seemed like way too long.  
\--

Quinn wasn’t sure why she was so upset, but she was. It felt like…a betrayal somehow, but Quinn wasn’t exactly sure why.

She’d gone to New York for a little vacation-- she’d really needed one and it’d been planned for a while. When she forgot that she planned a vacation at all, it meant that she really needed it. And anyway, it felt good to get away from Dan for a while, too. She loved him, but living with a person could be so exhausting, especially a guy like Dan who constantly wanted to pick apart their relationship.

She stayed with Brittany and Santana, who’d long been her best friends. They’d been best friends since middle school and although she knew Brittany and Santana were always closer to each other than either of them were to her, she loved the hell out of them and they loved the hell out of her, too. Brittany and Santana had been friends since they were little kids together in pre-school, grew up together, fell in love, escaped from their tiny small Ohio town and came to New York to follow their dreams. The only thing Quinn wished were different for them was that she wished they’d gone to Los Angeles like she did, that way she could have all her closest friends in one city. But Santana and Brittany were happier in New York-- every time they visited her in LA, they sniffed with Manhattan snobbery.

They got nostalgic for high school for whatever reason. High school was not a time in her life that Quinn wished to revisit. Her parents tolerated her presence once she got pregnant and allowed her to stay simply because she was a minor and they were responsible for her. She gave up her baby because she thought it would make her parents love her again, or at least, forgive her. She thought, maybe, they would soften towards her if they weren’t awakened by a baby’s cries at all hours of the night. But they didn’t soften. They _never_ softened, and when she was a lonely teenager, she found herself wishing she’d kept her baby so that she would have someone who would love her back.

But glee club and cheerleading-- those were her escapes. Those were the things she was most fond of, because she was good at them. Maybe she wasn’t good enough at singing for a professional career, but she was good enough to win a few competitions, get a few solos and bring the damn house down at karaoke. Maybe she wasn’t a gifted enough athlete to pursue sports professionally and she wasn’t a phenomenal dancer like Brittany. But her talents carried her far enough-- carried her through living in a house where it was clear her parents only tolerated her, carried her through the whispers and rumors that followed her for the rest of high school and carried her through high school itself to get herself to college. She had nothing but good memories of glee club and cheerleading.

They popped in the DVD of the competition from Nationals their junior year. It’d been a devastating loss and to a local school to boot. Carmel High’s Vocal Adrenaline team was one of the best in the _country_ and Quinn remembered being proud for being a member. She joined on a lark to be with her boyfriend, Finn, but she’d genuinely enjoyed it. She enjoyed it enough to convince Brittany and Santana to join and they’d enjoyed winning various competitions. They enjoyed it until they went up against McKinley High’s New Directions-- a school that was just a few miles away in the next town.

New Directions had been their chief rival, and each team had gone to Nationals as far back as Quinn could remember.

But when McKinley High’s team took stage, the brunette who took center stage was familiar.

Quinn’s eyes widened and she leaned in closer to the TV.

She was younger, of course-- a teenager. But the dark hair, the brown eyes, that wide smile. Those things were the same. And really, twenty five year old Rachel didn’t look all that different from a teenaged Rachel. And once Rachel sang, it flooded back to Quinn. Rachel. Rachel was that brunette, the one that wowed everyone each and every time she sang. The slightly high-strung, but mega-talented one.

Rachel.

“Oh my God,” Quinn said. “That’s Rachel.”

“What?” Santana said. “Your coworker friend? The one who wouldn’t sing with us that time we went to Brass Monkey? She said she can’t sing!”

“No,” Brittany interrupted. “She never said she can’t sing. She said, ‘I don’t sing,’ there’s a difference. Besides, she said she didn’t want you to know about it.”

Quinn gaped at Brittany. “You _knew_? Why didn’t you tell me?!”

Brittany looked at Quinn blankly. “She asked me not to.”

“You’re _my_ friend, Brittany. Not hers!”

“I recognized her,” Brittany said quietly. “We were both in the bathroom, so I asked her about it. She admitted it was her, but she asked me not to tell you. She said she didn’t want to talk about it, that she had her reasons.” Brittany pouted. “She just looked so sad, so I said ‘yes.’”

“Ugh,” Quinn snapped, but she wasn’t really mad at Brittany. She was mad at _Rachel_ , because this honestly felt like a betrayal. She didn’t know why it felt like a betrayal, but it did.

Quinn _thought_ Rachel looked familiar when they first met, but she shrugged it off. After all, they’d grown up close together and they went to the same college. It was highly likely that she actually had seen Rachel around, even before they knew one another, so of course Rachel looked familiar. And then when they both revealed they were from Ohio, they’d bonded over shared Midwestern roots. They bonded even more over UCLA.

But when Rachel said she’d gone to McKinley and Quinn casually said, “oh, you guys were our rivals” and then laughingly admitted to being a Glee club kid once upon a time, Rachel never said anything. Quinn tried to think if she’d ever talked in depth about Glee, but honestly, she really hadn’t. She and Rachel were both distant enough from high school not to talk about it, except to share a few random anecdotes. If they talked about the past, it was usually about college, which was a less distant past. They laughed about the fact they’d both gone to UCLA, majored in similar fields, graduated in the same year and still never met until they both started working in the same place.

Quinn thought that Rachel should have mentioned being on the Glee club at McKinley, especially when Quinn mentioned she was on the Glee club at Carmel. New Directions and Vocal Adrenaline had an _intense_ competition, and it was something that Rachel _should_ have mentioned. It was _weird_ that Rachel hadn’t, because Rachel must know that they’d competed against each other in high school, and wasn’t that something that she should have brought up when the subject came up? It made Quinn paranoid because she simply didn’t get why Rachel didn’t bring it up.

“It’s weird, right?” Quinn asked. “Why didn’t she say something?”

“It _is_ weird,” Santana agreed. “Why don’t you call her right now and ask her. You should be all ‘listen, bitch. It’s really fucking weird that you didn’t say anything, what the hell is the matter with you?’ and get all in her face about it.”

“Or,” Brittany interjected mildly. “You can say, ‘Rachel, why didn’t you ever tell me you were such an amazing singer?’ and segue into it.”

Quinn couldn’t help but chuckle because Santana and Brittany were still so reliable when it came to being good cop, bad cop, even after all these years. “

It continued to bother her. And so she couldn’t help but call Rachel to demand an explanation. But instead of Rachel picking up, it was some guy. And it wasn’t Nick.

“Rachel Berry’s phone,” he answered cheerfully.

Caught off guard, Quinn frowned. That didn’t sound like Nick. “Nick?”

“No, this is Mike,” he said. “Rachel’s just in the bathroom.”

“God,” Quinn said, her irritation and suspicion temporarily giving away to affectionate exasperation. “Rachel, always in the bathroom.”

He laughed. “I know, right?”

“Hey,” Quinn said. “You dated Rach in high school, right?”

He paused for only a moment. “Yeah,” he answered. “Why?”

“Maybe you can answer something for me.”

And she knew it was wrong. She knew it was wrong to go behind Rachel’s back like she was some private investigator and Rachel was some cheating, evasive spouse. But she had to ask.

“Maybe,” Mike said cautiously.

“Did Rachel sing in high school? Was she on the Glee club?”

“Oh,” Mike said, sounding relieved. “Yeah, of course,” he said. “She’s an _amazing_ singer. She was going to go to Julliard, wanted a career on Broadway and everything.” He paused. “I’m honestly surprised she never found her way back to it. I guess I understand, but it was her dream.”

“Why didn’t she?” Quinn asked quietly. “What happened?”

“Uh..” It was just one word. Barely a word, but he sounded distinctly uncomfortable. “I’ll tell her you called,” he said. “I see your name on the caller ID.” With that, he hung up.

Quinn was even more confused than ever. And she felt _terrible_ because she knew she’d invaded Rachel’s privacy, and it was the one thing they never did to each other. They gossiped about each other and other people, they pried into each other’s lives, but there was a distinct line for both of them and she’d just crossed it.

\--

She expected a raging phone call from Rachel, but it never came. All that came was a text message confirming the details of when Rachel should pick Quinn up from the airport. Quinn was cautious about it, but Rachel wasn’t acting any differently, so Quinn assumed that Rachel’s ex-boyfriend must have declined to tell Rachel that Quinn called and that he talked to her.

It was kind of dishonest, but Quinn didn’t blame him. She’d probably have done the same.

Still, the whole thing continued to bother Quinn and she was _still_ suspicious about why Rachel would leave something like that out. Their high school careers in the glee club seemed so benign that leaving it out seemed somehow malignant.

She had plans to bring it up kind of casually when they were alone. Dan would be at work, and so Quinn would have invited Rachel inside for a drink and they could have talked about it. But instead, Quinn couldn’t help blurting it out when Rachel picked her up from LAX after her flight home. They were leaving the airport, still on the surface streets to get onto the freeway.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were on the Glee club at McKinley?”

Rachel stepped on the brakes so hard, they both pitched forward and then slammed back when the car came to an abrupt stop. The car behind them almost crashed into them and honked long and angrily.

When Rachel turned to look at her, Rachel’s dark eyes were anguished but they were _angry_ , too. Rachel just stared at her for a moment before she wordlessly drove Quinn home.

Quinn waited until Rachel put the car into park to speak again.

“Well?” Quinn demanded. “Are you going to answer my question?”

Maybe it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe it was a big deal. Maybe she should drop it. Maybe she shouldn’t. But whatever the case was, it was still weird and Quinn didn’t like to let go of weird.

Rachel’s voice was flat. “No.”

\--

She asked again, and then one more time, and each time, she was rebuffed by Rachel so coldly that Quinn had no idea if she’d ever known Rachel at all. But Rachel’s refusal to talk about something so seemingly benign just made Quinn even more paranoid. She felt… exposed somehow, because all these years, Rachel had known they’d competed against each other members of rival Glee clubs and never said anything. Rachel knew something about her that Quinn had no idea Rachel knew about. Obviously she’d been the one to tell Rachel that she was on the Vocal Adrenaline team, but Rachel knew much _more_ than that-- had witnessed Quinn while she sang six months pregnant, had seen Quinn stand in between her ex-boyfriend and his ex-best friend that she cheated on him with. Rachel _saw_ all of these things first hand, and maybe Rachel didn’t remember or maybe she hadn’t put the pieces together, but the fact was, Rachel had witnessed all that. And never said a word. And obviously there was a reason for it, and Quinn just wanted to know what it was, because she felt betrayed.

High school had been hard for her, too-- much harder than she ever let on to anyone because people tended to be unsympathetic to tall pretty blondes who were popular cheerleaders on the Glee club who went on to win an academic scholarship to UCLA. But high school had been really hard for her-- she cheated on her boyfriend with his best friend, got pregnant, got kicked out of her house and was grudgingly taken back in, had her baby, gave up her baby and was treated like a stranger by her parents until she finally left their house and never went back. She _lost_ so much in high school and she came to LA because it was far enough away that she could pretend and forget.

And then she met Rachel who was from the next damn town in Ohio, and they talked about the parks they’d both gone to when they were little, reminisced about frequenting the same restaurants, the same malls and how cold the weather had been. But since they never met, it was still like having a fresh start. And now she found out that every time she’d babbled on about being in Glee club and Rachel acted like she had no idea what she was talking it, now she found out that Rachel had known. Rachel had known _exactly_ what she was talking about, because Rachel had been there. And granted she didn’t talk about it that much. In the three years they’d known each other, Quinn had brought it up, _maybe_ four times, three of which were only in passing. But she still thought Rachel should have said something, especially considering that she’d been the fucking _center_ of the New Direction’s team, that she’d been the one to blow all their competition out of the water. She felt too betrayed, it was just too weird and Quinn just couldn’t let it go.

The more Rachel refused, the more determined Quinn became.

Quinn was ashamed to admit it, but she poked around a little. She didn’t want to go so far as to Google it or anything, not that she knew what to Google beyond, like, Rachel’s name. Although she did try it and she had no idea why she didn’t do it before, because Rachel’s name came up in a bunch of pages that recorded Glee club wins. She called her ex-boyfriend Finn, with whom she was still on good terms, called her former baby daddy, Noah Puckerman and asked _them_ if they remembered the dark-haired singer on McKinley’s New Directions.

Finn admitted to a crush on Rachel, which in his infinite sweetness, he apologized for, because he’d still been dating Quinn at the time. It struck Quinn how she’d always had the talent for finding boyfriends who were too kind to her because she’d _cheated_ on Finn with his best friend, Puck, got pregnant by Puck and tried to pass the baby off as Finn’s. And now here they were, 25 years old and Finn was apologizing for having a _crush_ on the singer from the opposing team that he’d been too intimidated to talk to.

Puck was different though. Puck remembered Rachel instantly.

“I made out with her in some broom close at Nationals during junior year,” he said. “She talked a lot, but she was hot, so I just let her talk. She said something about wanting to go to Julliard.” He paused. “I think she would have had a good chance, she was talented.”

Quinn made a face. “You didn’t sleep with her, right?”

Puck was quiet for a moment. “No,” he answered honestly. “I was going to, but then everyone on her team was running around looking for her. Do you remember that? Everyone was yelling for her like she was some lost kid and they were sending out a search party. She got pretty freaked out, so she left.” His tone suddenly became sly. “So I slept with Mary Miller instead.”

Quinn sighed. “You’re still such a dog.”

But she was struck with a sudden memory of that day. The New Directions team was small, only twelve members, one of whom was in a wheelchair, which was what made Vocal Adrenaline’s loss to New Directions even more embarrassing because Vocal Adrenaline had twenty four members. There were all those kids from New Directions running around shouting for Rachel (the kid in the wheelchair was rolling around, practically flying himself down the hall shouting Rachel’s name). At the time, Quinn just thought they wanted to celebrate their win and they were looking for another team member. She really hadn’t paid attention to who was missing or anything like that. But now things fit a little more. Now she knew who the Rachel they were all shouting for was, now she knew that Rachel was definitely the one missing because Rachel had been making out with Puck (ew) in some closet and now she remembered that the New Directions kids did not look jubilant, they looked afraid.

\--  
She confessed her sins, whatever they are, to Rachel and asked Rachel again “why didn’t you ever tell me you could sing?”

Rachel was furious and instead of answering the question, she scowled at Quinn. But she was angry enough that she actually wanted to _hit_ Quinn. “It’s none of your business.”

She couldn’t remember the last time she was so angry. At least Quinn was honest about trying to hit up Mike for information, and Rachel planned to call Mister Mike Chang and give him a piece of her mind, because what the _fuck_ , he was her best friend, he was supposed to protect her from stuff like this. Why would he say _anything_ to _anyone_ about that time in her life when he _knew_ all about it. She moved to LA the moment she could because she couldn’t get out of Lima fast enough and he _knew_ that. And maybe she’d talked a lot about Quinn to Mike so that he felt like maybe he already knew the blonde or something, but he _didn’t_. He had no right to tell Quinn anything and Quinn had no right to go behind her back to ask him.

And it got even worse because Quinn asked _other_ people about her--people who she didn’t know and who didn’t know her. She didn’t care if Quinn’s ex-boyfriend, the one the blonde had cheated on had some crush on her. Rachel had no idea who he was and she didn’t give a shit. And Rachel only vaguely remembered the mohawked boy she made out with in some closet on the day of Nationals and it was only slightly interesting to her because he turned out to be Quinn’s baby daddy. She didn’t _care_ who these people were, but it pissed her off that Quinn asked these people about her rather than asking her.

And okay, Quinn _had_ asked, but Rachel thought she’d made it pretty clear that she did _not_ want to talk about it and to have Quinn persist…Rachel was going to lose her mind. She really was. She was losing her temper and she was going to lose her mind.

“I don’t get it, why didn’t you ever tell me that you used to sing? I mean, I used to talk about how I was in the _Glee_ club. You never said anything! Are you hiding something from me?” Quinn demanded. “You’re being secretive, and it’s really weird!”

“I’m not hiding anything and I’m not being secretive. It’s not about _you_ , Quinn. It’s my life and it was a long time ago, all right? It was a whole other life. I don’t want to talk about it. Not with you. Not with anyone. Not ever.”

“But you were going to Julliard and--”

“Quinn, it just wasn’t what I wanted anymore.”

“But how do you go from going to Julliard to not wanting it anymore? I mean, that makes _no_ sense, and our teams went up against each other, Rachel. _We_ went up against each other. A lot! Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“I told you, it was this whole other life! It’s not who I am anymore!”

“But--”

“Look,” Rachel said softly. “I don’t make _you_ talk about things you don’t want to. We’re friends, but we haven’t known each other that long. We’re _coworkers_ , Quinn. Okay, and you’re a _really_ good one. You’re not just a coworker, you’re my _friend_ , but just because you’re my friend at work doesn’t make you my best friend or something.”

Quinn was stung. “I never said we were BFFs or something.”

Rachel rubbed her face. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I _love_ you, you’re my friend. But all that was this whole other part of my life and I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Well, why not?”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “What part of not liking to talk about it don’t you get?” The tone was teasing, but the look on Rachel’s face clearly indicated she meant it.

Quinn chuckled to lighten the mood, not because she particularly felt like laughing. “Okay, okay,” she said, backing off the subject. “I’m sorry.”

Rachel’s eyes were hard. “Don’t bring it up again,” she warned softly.

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”

Rachel’s eyes softened. “No,” she said quietly. “Of course not. I’d never…” She took a deep breath. “I’m asking you, as my friend, not to ever bring this up again.”

“I just think it’s _weird_ okay? I mean, what are you hiding? What, were you some big dork in high school or something? Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. So I don’t get--”

“I was a _colossal_ dork in high school,” Rachel interrupted. “And I’m not embarrassed about it. The only people who liked me were the other Glee kids, and even then, most of them didn’t. I got Slushied every day and my fashion sense was _horrible_. I don’t _care_ if you know that or not, all right? I don’t _care_. But I’m asking you as my friend, don’t bring this up again. Don’t ask people who knew me back then for information. Don’t try to figure this out because I don’t _want_ to talk about. Just thinking about this is stressing me out, so can you just _promise_ me?”

“It’s just weird to me, okay? I mean, you must have known that we competed against each other, and you copped to it with Brittany, so why didn’t you tell me? It’s weird!”

“Fuck!” Rachel couldn’t hold it in anymore. She just exploded. “It’s none of your business, Quinn! Don’t you get that? I don’t _care_ that you think it’s weird. I don’t _care_ how you feel about this. I don’t care! Do I make you talk about giving up a baby in high school? Do I make you talk about how _that_ feels? Do I make you talk about how it is with your parents? No. I don’t. Because I _respect_ you don’t want to talk about it. And I know if you wanted to, you’d talk to me. But you don’t, so I don’t push you. Back off!”

Quinn sucked in a couple deep breaths, stunned to hear painful secrets she’d confided in Rachel thrown back in her face. The problem with being thrown away by your own parents is that you never quite got over it and didn’t deal with rejection by the people you loved particularly well.

Quinn could mostly get by on the day to day. She put on a happy face, went to work, split the rent and bills with Dan, listened to her friends, complained to her friends, and occasionally talked shit about her friends to other friends. She lived an adult life and she did it pretty well. But mix in the right combination of hurt, rejection and anxiety over a broken friendship with the usual things that composed an adult life-- worries about money and the state of her relationship with her boyfriend, and the stresses of the job, and she regressed to that hurt, scared and alone teenager. And when she was a teenager, she wasn’t a particularly nice one.

“Fuck you,” Quinn snapped. “You’re a spoiled fucking bitch,” she hissed. “What’s the matter? Your parents wouldn’t pay for Julliard, so you couldn’t go?” And she knew it was wrong to throw someone’s dead parents in her face, but once Quinn got started, she couldn’t stop herself. “Or did you just realize you didn’t have the talent to make it, so you were too scared to even try so, you’re just bitter and angry about it? And it doesn’t surprise me that you were a loser in high school, Rachel. You’re just making a big deal out of nothing,” she sneered. “So go on with your ridiculous poor me routine, but I’m over it. I won’t bring it up to you because I don’t give a shit anymore.”

Rachel stared at her for a long moment, speechless, but seething. Finally, she crossed her arms in front of her chest and moved in close to Quinn. “I don’t give a shit about you anymore either,” she said, her voice steady

It stung Quinn to hear that because she’d never said she’d stopped caring about Rachel.  



	3. Chapter 3

**Title:** April Fools  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R, maybe  
**Length:** 7000  
**Spoilers:**. Through Sectionals.  
**Summary:** An April Fools’ joke stops being a joke. AU future fic, I’d classify this as angsty romantic comedy.

* * *

 

It was weird to have them fighting and be genuinely angry with one another. They were always a team-- so close they practically seemed sororal. They sniped at, frequently insulted and relentlessly mocked one another, but underneath it all, they were still friends. When it was really important, they were always tender with one another and they knew they were one another’s biggest support systems at work, and frequently outside of work, too. The two of them, as a pair, were often the brunt of the others’ good-natured jokes, and they only became closer as a result.

So it was strange to see them so cold with one another.

Their big April Fools’ joke was completely forgotten, they couldn’t even look at one another anymore. Ironically, their real fight accomplished the intended effect of the April Fools’ joke, because their friends were convinced they had a lover’s quarrel.

Everything was different now.

The aftermath of their argument left them so angry with one another, there was no attempt on either of their parts to reconcile.

\--

Their regular Thursday night dinner and drinks, always just the two of them, no other friends, no husbands or boyfriends allowed, became a thing of the past immediately after their fight. There was no attempt on either party to make it happen to diffuse the situation. They were to angry with one another to even try.

Rachel came home on that first Thursday after their fight to find Nick was already home. He was sprawled on the couch and it’d been the first time she’d seen him in 36 hours because of their conflicting work schedules. He was clearly exhausted, but he was watching a program on what appeared to be glaciers or something. She wasn’t sure.

She took a seat next to him and pointed her index and thumb of her right hand at him, pretending like it was a gun. “Stick ‘em up, copper,” she said in her best old timey bank robber voice.

He grinned at her and put his hands up.

She kissed his cheek and then cuddled against him. He put his arm around her and she rested her head against his chest as she watched people seem to jump down into a glacier. She had no idea what those people were doing, but Nick seemed fascinated.

He was freshly showered because he smelled nice, but the shower didn’t seem to do anything to revive him. He still looked exhausted. A part of her felt guilty because she often resented him for being needy, for demanding more of her affection than she was naturally inclined to give anyone. Even after five years of marriage, he still couldn’t seem to forgive her for the time she cheated on him-- two years before they even got married. His suspicions and jealousies were hard to deal with sometimes. But he loved her, he was good to her and more importantly, he was the kind of man w ho threw himself into everything he did-- his marriage, his friendships and his job. He was like her in a way.

She felt extra guilty because she was genuinely distraught over the fight with Quinn. She wanted to be friends again, but at the same time, she was so angry, she wasn’t sure what the point was. She could see Quinn’s point-- objectively, if she were in Quinn’s shoes, she’d think it was weird, too. She’d think it was weird that she’d never said anything about being in Glee, especially because they’d competed against each other. But that period in her life was painful for her, and it took her a long time to be able to leave that behind. She wasn’t going to dig it up and make it feel fresh against because someone was _curious_ , not even if that someone was Quinn.

But she knew what it meant that she was so distraught. Somewhere, in the span of a month, she’d fallen in love with Quinn, and that was just _so_ wrong because she was _married_ to a really good guy, and Quinn had a boyfriend who, sure, maybe Quinn always seemed ready to move on from, but Rachel knew Dan was a good guy and Quinn loved him and didn’t want to hurt him. It was just _wrong_.

And Nick… Nick had been the police officer who comforted her when her parents died. When she was an emotional wreck, far away from home, he was the one who comforted her. They carried on a friendship through phone calls, text messages and emails, and somewhere along the way, they fell in love. When she told him she was going to UCLA, he applied to the LAPD, giving up his job in Orlando. He _moved_ for her. They came to LA, started dating and after two years, they got married. He became the only family she had and while his family hated her guts, he always defended her to them. She willingly excluded herself from holidays and his family events because she didn’t want to make him choose, didn’t want to make him lose his family like she’d lost her own. And so far, it’d worked.

Granted their eight year age difference always put them at different stages in their lives. When she was a seventeen, and then eighteen year old girl who just wanted to date around, he was ready to settle down and be in a proper relationship. He wasn’t ready to get married or anything, but he wanted a relationship, and she’d been so afraid to not have _anyone_ , that she just went along with it. As a result, she ended up cheating on him when the relationship was fairly new, and it took two years for him to stop resenting her. At least, it took two years for Rachel to stop _feeling_ his resentment. When she was twenty, he was twenty-eight and ready to settle down, so he asked her to get married and so they did. Now that both their jobs were pretty stable and their incomes were pretty sufficient, he wanted to start trying for a baby. But Rachel wasn’t ready yet, and it was only in this particular instance did Rachel put her foot down on the matter, saying she wasn’t ready. He respected that.

“Isn’t this your night with Quinn?” he asked her after a few minutes.

“Yeah,” Rachel said. “But I don’t think we’re going to be doing that anymore.”

“Why not?”

Rachel swallowed hard to keep her voice from trembling. “I don’t think we’re friends anymore.”

He petted her hair. “You guys are friends,” he said confidently. “It was probably just a fight, right?”

“She asked Mike about me when he was here. She called and he picked up the phone.” Rachel paused. “She asked him about back when I was on New Directions,” she said quietly. “And then she went around asking people from her team if they remembered me.”

He winced. “Oh,” he said. “Are you really mad at her?”

“I could hit her,” Rachel admitted.

He held her. “I know you don’t like to talk about it, but did you ever think maybe it’d feel better to tell her? You always felt guilty about not telling her you were on the McKinley team anyway.”

“It was none of her business!” Rachel exclaimed.

“I know,” he said. “I’m just saying maybe you’d feel better.”

Rachel burrowed into his chest. “It’s none of her business. I put it behind me and she’s making it all come up again.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know she’s doing it.”

“But she shouldn’t have done it in the first place,” Rachel reminded him sharply.

He stroked her hair which calmed her down ever so slightly. “Yeah,” he conceded. “I know.”

Rachel continued to watch the program with him although she absorbed nothing. She wondered if they hadn’t gone through with their stupid April Fools’ joke, if they hadn’t become even closer as a result of it, would it hurt this much that they were fighting? Because now Rachel was fairly sure she was kinda sorta in love with someone that she could barely stand to be in the room with and whom she wasn’t sure she even liked anymore. And also, that person didn’t like her anymore, either. But _God_ , it hurt.

\--

As always, Rachel arrived early before everyone else just as she always did.Usually Quinn unapologetically arrived anywhere from five to ten minutes late, and mysteriously always chose to call that being on time. They always talked for at least ten minutes once Quinn arrived as she waited for her ancient computer to boot up. Rachel had been at work for at least an hour by then, getting in work before everyone else did, and she so she didn’t feel guilty about taking a ten minute break to talk to Quinn.

That was their tradition.

Now there was silence.

Quinn walked into the office they all shared and even as everyone else greeted her, Rachel was silent. Her iPod’s headphones firmly in her ears, Rachel stared straight at her computer as Quinn took her seat. Quinn ignored Rachel and Rachel ignored Quinn.

It took two weeks of silence for Helena to break.

“Oh my _God_ ,” she exclaimed in exasperation at 3pm, after a particularly silently hostile day. She stood up and threw her pen on the desk. “What is _wrong_ with you two? Don’t you realize how uncomfortable it is for the rest of us when you guys don’t talk to each other?”

“Oh, I apologize profusely,” Rachel said, initially sounding sincere, but her voice took on a slight edge. “I didn’t realize that we were making you so uncomfortable and that we had to take your feelings into consideration.”

“I apologize, too,” Quinn said. “How horrible of us not to think of you guys! How selfish”

“It _is_ selfish,” Helena said. “We all work in a _really_ tiny space. The eight of us share this stupid room and it’s bad enough it only has one window and it actually used to be a methadone clinic or whatever so I keep banging into that stupid tray in the door where they used to slip the drug addicts the methadone and it hurts like hell. But you guys are making it even more unbearable! You guys don’t talk and it makes it really uncomfortable for us to talk, too because it feels like taking sides if we talk to either of you and not the other, even if we’re just asking for like, a spare paper clip. Just sort out your differences already!”

“I never asked you to take sides,” Quinn snapped.

“Neither did I,” Rachel said. “And there’s nothing to sort out. We’re just not friends anymore. It’s not a big deal. People stop being friends all the time and it’s not the end of the world.”

The room went silent.

Quinn was stung.”We aren’t friends anymore?” she asked, her voice wavering slightly. “I thought we were just having a fight.”

Rachel winced and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

Quinn stood up abruptly. “Excuse me,” she said, hurrying out of the room.

Rachel stared after her and there was an awkward silence.

Jessica raised her hand, school nerd style. “I think I’m on Team Quinn.”

“Don’t worry, girl,” Sarah told Rachel. “I’m totally Team Rachel.” She gave Rachel a tiny smile. “Go after her though. You know you have to.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said softly, she stood up and scurried out of the room.

She checked the restroom, but Quinn wasn’t there. She checked the lunch room, but Quinn wasn’t there either. Then she thought about it and remembered the tree in the back of the building where she and Quinn used to sneak cigarettes before they both quit two years ago. She walked there and found Quinn standing underneath the tree, hands in pockets, looking glum.

“ _What?!_ ” Quinn demanded sharply.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said quietly. “I was an asshole. I don’t know why I said that.”

“But it’s true, right?” Quinn snapped. “We aren’t friends anymore. We don’t talk, we don’t hang out, we just work together.”

“Just come back inside,” Rachel said softly. “Let’s go back inside, okay? It’s kind of cold out here and you didn’t bring a jacket.”

It was unseasonably cold for early April. It was supposed to rain fairly hard for the next few days, but the rain clouds had already moved in.

“What makes you think I even want to be in the same _room_ as you? I’d rather freeze to death out here than be in _any_ room with you ever again.”

“I’ll stay out here,” Rachel offered. “Just…just go back inside, okay?”

“Fuck you, Rachel.”

“Quinn,” Rachel sighed. She took off her jacket, stepped closer to Quinn and held the jacket out to the blonde. “Here.”

“Sorry, Rachel. But I’m not a midget like you, so your jacket from the Baby Gap won’t fit me.”

“Quinn, just take my jacket, you’ve borrowed it before, so we both know it fits. Or come back inside.”

“ _You_ go back inside,” Quinn said. “I told you, I’d rather freeze.”

“Quinn, just come inside,” Rachel pleaded, she reached out to put her hand on Quinn’s shoulder.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Quinn snapped, shoving Rachel.

Rachel’s eyes momentarily flickered in surprise but she took a step back and put her hands up. “Sorry,” she apologized. “Sorry, I won’t. Okay. Just…please, come back inside.” She looked up at the sky. “I think it might rain.”

Quinn felt a momentary pang of guilt, but it was quickly replaced by the need to hurt Rachel viciously because Rachel had hurt her. “Get _out_ of my face, Rachel. I’m _glad_ we aren’t friends anymore. You’re crazy _and_ you’re a bitch.”

Quinn knew she was being awful, that she was going too far. But she’d _loved_ Rachel and now she just felt hurt and betrayed. She wanted to make Rachel hurt as fiercely and terribly as Rachel made her hurt.

Rachel bit her lower lip, but didn’t respond. She set her jacket on the ground. “I’m going to leave this here, okay?” she said. “Just in case you might want to use it. But come inside, okay?”

“What makes you think I’d want to wear any shitty thing _you’d_ wear.”

“Don’t stay out here too long,” Rachel said softly. “It’s cold.”

Rachel gave her a slight smile and then backed away. Quinn waited for a few minutes, staring at the jacket before growling in frustration. She picked up the jacket and put it on. It smelled like Rachel. God, she hated Rachel at the moment. She stood out there for a few minutes wondering what she should do. She felt tears start to leak out of her eyes. She couldn’t believe Rachel said they weren’t friends anymore. ‘It’s not a big deal,’ Rachel said. Not a big deal!

She wiped angrily at her eyes and dug her hands into pockets of Rachel’s jacket. She felt something hard and pulled it out. It was that stupid three-star charm that Rachel always carried around with her. She stared closely at it and saw that there were music notes engraved on one of the stars. She stuck it back into the pocket and fumed for a few more minutes.

She knew she couldn’t stay outside forever, but she was too angry and upset to go back inside.

It took a few minutes for her to calm down enough to feel ready enough to go back inside. She was reasonably confident she wouldn’t beat the crap out of Rachel on sight, but she couldn’t squelch the pettiness that caused her to take off Rachel’s jacket and throw it back on the ground where Rachel had left it. She started to walk back to the building, but stopped and went back. She was petty, but she wasn’t petty enough to leave the little trinket Rachel seemed to love so much. She pulled it out of Rachel’s pocket and stuck it in her own. She wasn’t so petty to leave it behind in Rachel’s jacket, but she wasn’t big enough to not do something to hurt Rachel a little more.

She walked back into the office she shared with her friends and saw that Rachel was gone.

“She left, said she was going to check in on a client,” Judy told her. “She said it’d be easier for you.”

“Well, she’s right,” Quinn snapped.

“You okay?”Lina asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” Quinn said.

It was quiet in there until it was time to go home.  
\--

When Quinn got home that day, she was in a foul mood and Dan was her most convenient target.

“Hey,” he greeted, when she got home. “Isn’t this date night with Rachel?” he asked with a smile.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” she snapped because she was still angry from her argument with Rachel and she hated that he described her Thursday evenings with Rachel as “date night” even though she sort of started to look at it that way.

He raised an eyebrow at her. Quinn felt the urge to kick him because he was always so calm.

“I just meant that this is your regular night with Rachel to have dinner and drinks.”

“Well, I’m not with her tonight,” Quinn snapped.

“Did you guys have a fight?”

Quinn scowled. “No,” she denied angrily. “Maybe we’re both just busy tonight or something.”

He looked bewildered. “Okay,” he said. “Well, it’s good to have you home. _We_ can have dinner together. I’m making a grilled cheese sandwich, do you want one?”

“ _No_ ,” she snapped. She stomped to their bedroom.

\--

It was 11am the next day when Rachel began looking frantically through her purse. It’d been an awkward morning, but no blood had been shed.

Rachel was just getting a stick of gum out of her purse. She kept the gum in a little side pocket in her purse when she realized the stars charm she always had with her was gone. She’d carried that with her everywhere, but now it was gone. She began searching through her purse frantically and then finally just dumped everything out on her desk, looking for it. It was small, but she’d never misplaced it before. She always made sure that it was the first thing she transferred when she changed purses and she was _never_ without it. God, what happened to it?

And then she remembered that yesterday morning she’d gone on a coffee run with Jessica, but she didn’t want to bring her purse, so she just grabbed some cash and her good luck charm and stuck it in her jacket pocket because her pants didn’t have any pockets. She must have forgotten to transfer it back. And then she realized she’d lent that jacket to Quinn.

God, her _dads_ had given her that charm when she was five and said she wanted to be a star when she grew up. She used to wear it on a necklace, but the part that hooked into the chain had broken and a jeweler she took it to told her it couldn’t be fixed without possibly damaging the charm, and she didn’t want that. So she just carried it with her wherever she went. And now, she’d possibly lost it.

Oh God.

“Quinn,” Rachel said, her voice a little frantic. Frantic enough that everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up.

“Yeah?” Quinn asked, unable to stop the tinge of reflexive worry at the tone of Rachel’s voice until she remembered she was mad at Rachel and they weren’t friends anymore.

“Do you have the jacket I gave you yesterday?”

“No,” Quinn snapped.

“No?” Rachel squeaked.

“No,” Quinn said. “I told you I didn’t want it, so I left it where you left it.”

“You did?” Rachel asked, her voice becoming slightly desperate. “Seriously?”

“Do you see it with me?”

Rachel swallowed hard. “Oh,” she said, feeling her heart twist slightly.

She got up and ran out of the room. Sarah stood up to gaze out the window and watched Rachel run out the doors of the building, across the parking lot through the back gate.

“You didn’t really leave her jacket out there, did you?” Sarah asked softly.

“I told her I didn’t want it.”

“That’s mean,” Sarah said unhappily.

“I would have done something like that,” Jessica interjected. She laughed. “It’s just a jacket, she’ll get over it.”

“It’s still mean,” Sarah said.

“Remind me not to make you mad at me,” Lina commented.

“That was shitty of you,” Grace said.

“It was,” Judy agreed.

“Shut up,” Quinn snapped.

Rachel came back a few minutes later, soaking wet from the rain. No jacket. She was filled with a combination of sorrow and rage and she barely had the control to suppress her instinct to lash out. She sat in her chair for the rest of the day, quiet and dejected. Her heart pounded the entire time she ran to the tree and it wasn’t from exertion. When she didn’t see her jacket, her heart dropped. Someone clearly had picked it up and taken it-- there were a lot of homeless people in the area. She didn’t care about the jacket, she cared about what was in the pocket. The little charm her fathers had given her, the one with three connected stars to represent all of them. It was gone. Why didn’t she take it out of her pocket and into her purse? Why was she too lazy to bring her purse to get coffee? God, what an idiot she was. She knew it was her fault, it was her fault that it got lost, but she couldn’t help but blame Quinn, too. She was already furious with Quinn and she just knew if she even looked at Quinn, she would explode.

She left early for the day, saying she was going to get an early start on the weekend.

“She’s a drama queen,” Jessica said, rolling her eyes. “All that bullshit over a stupid jacket?”

Quinn was inclined to agree.

\--

It was the same thing for the next week. When Rachel came back to work on Monday, she was sullen, quiet and dejected. She didn’t talk to anyone else and grunted when anyone tried to talk to her about something that wasn’t work-related. She let her phone calls go to voicemail and only returned the ones that were most urgent.

“What a _drama_ queen,” Jessica said, every day for seven work days when Rachel was away from her desk.

Finally, Helena snapped.

“Jesus Christ, maybe it’s not about the jacket Maybe there was something _inside_ the jacket. She could have had her social security card or something in there for all we know.”

“Who carries their social security card around nowadays?” Lina demanded.

‘Oh fuck,’ Quinn thought. The stars charm. The one that was in Rachel’s jacket pocket. The one she’d pocketed into her pants. She’d forgotten all about it.

‘Fuck,’ Quinn thought again.

\--

She went home and tried to remember what she’d worn that day when she decided to be petty and leave Rachel’s jacket behind. She was relieved that she’d put off doing laundry, but as she searched through each pocket of every pair of pants, she started to become a little more desperate. She couldn’t find it.

Finally she grabbed her hamper and dumped everything out, searching frantically for it, until finally, she found it. She let out a sigh of relief.

\--  
Quinn hoped to beat Rachel to work the next day, so she woke up extra early. She didn’t want some big scene, she just wanted to leave it on Rachel’s desk so that it was there when the brunette arrived. Quinn arrived at work at 7am, which was approximately 2 hours and five minutes earlier than she’d _ever_ been at work.

Rachel was already there.

Rachel looked up at the noise of Quinn’s entry and her “good morning” died on her lips.

Rachel just plugged her earbuds back in and went back to work.

Quinn swallowed hard, realizing the depths of Rachel’s anger toward her at that moment. Rachel hadn’t even looked at her for the past ten days, so Quinn never quite got a good look at Rachel. But the way Rachel _looked_ at her…there was rage there and it was actually kind of frightening. Rachel was clearly upset and just _stewing_ in her anger. There was a little part of Quinn that berated herself for allowing her pettiness to give up the moral high ground, because she was pretty sure that up until she left Rachel’s jacket on the concrete just to be a bitch, she actually did have the moral high ground. But mostly, she just felt awful that a really good friendship had turned into…this mess.

She approached Rachel’s desk rather than sitting in her chair. She set the charm on the desk and then walked away. She heard Rachel release a soft gasp.

Quinn sat down at her desk and watched as Rachel put the charm back into her purse.

It was about a minute later that Quinn got a notification from Microsoft Outlook. It was an email from Rachel.

 _‘Thank you,’_ it read simply.

Quinn hit reply. _‘You’re welcome,’_ she wrote back before she hit send.

A few hours later, Helena was rounding up the girls who were in the office to go to lunch. Quinn had already agreed to go with her over AIM .

“Grace, you down?” Helena asked.

“Where you going?”

“Ugh!” Helena exclaimed, because it was always the same thing. No one ever had anywhere they wanted to go, no one was ever craving anything so deciding where they were going turned into an ordeal. “Either you’re in or you’re out!”

“I’m in,” Grace sighed.

“Jude?”

“I’m in.”

“Sar?”

“I brought my lunch, sorry.”

“Rach?”

Rachel paused for a moment. She’d ducked out on lunch with the other girls ever since she had the fight with Quinn because Quinn was usually going to go and she was pretty furious with the blonde. But Quinn _had_ returned that charm to her…

“I’m in,” Rachel said, not looking up from her computer where she was typing an email to a guy she knew at a nearby community college who could help her client enroll in a CNA program.

Across from Rachel, Quinn sighed in relief.

\--

Lunch was civil, although Rachel and Quinn did not sit next to one another or speak to each other. Rachel hardly spoke at all through lunch, but at least she was present.

Helena drove and Rachel shouted “shotgun” to claim the front seat because on the ride over, she’d had to sit in the backseat. Since she was the shortest one, she always had to ‘ride bitch’ meaning she had to sit in the middle. On the ride over to the restaurant, she’d sat in between Grace and Quinn and it’d been deeply uncomfortable. She wasn’t going to risk that again.

However, Quinn shouted “shotgun” at the same time.

Rachel didn’t care about who had the front seat as long as she didn’t get stuck in the backseat with Quinn.

“Quinn can have it,” Rachel muttered, not looking at the blonde. “It’s the death seat anyway.”

\--

They slowly started to become friends again. It started when Quinn arrived at work early one morning for a meeting with a client. She’d complained all day the day before because she’d have to come in at eight am, rather than her usual five-to-fifteen minutes behind 9am.

She rushed in on time, but she’d scrambled to get ready because she woke up late, so she was a little harried. No morning coffee, no breakfast. In truth, her client wouldn’t have said anything if she’d been late, but these women had been treated so terribly in the past, like they weren’t even human that Quinn wanted to be respectful. She was an asshole sometimes, but she wasn’t a bad person. At least, she didn’t think she was.

She came into the office to find that as usual, Rachel was the only one there that early and she was already at her desk, working. But sitting on Quinn’s desk was a still-hot pomegranate blueberry latte from Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and a chocolate croissant-- one of her favorites. Quinn picked up the latte and took a sip. She sighed in contentment. She took a bite of the croissant. It was friggin’ delicious.

“Thanks,” she said, not quite looking at Rachel before she rushed off downstairs to reception to take her client into one of the interview rooms.

Rachel didn’t respond. She had her earphones in, and Quinn wasn’t sure if Rachel didn’t respond because she didn’t hear or if she just didn’t want to.

Later that day during their yearly training in the conference room when the FBI came to talk to them about wearing costumes and disguises in public when they were traveling with their clients because most of their clients still had some very angry human traffickers looking for them blah blah blah, Rachel took a seat next to Quinn. Granted it was the only one available in the room, but a couple of weeks ago, during the yearly sexual harassment training, Rachel had chosen to stand against the wall in the back of the room rather than sitting near Quinn. So it was a start. Quinn found herself unable to concentrate during the training because she was too preoccupied by glancing over at Rachel who did look like she was concentrating on the training. Quinn didn’t feel bad about it though because it was the same training she’d had once a year for as long as she’d worked there.

A couple days later, Quinn heard a particularly hilarious old episode _This American Life_ on NPR and so she downloaded it and burnt it to a CD because she just _knew_ that Rachel would find it hilarious. She came into work and left the CD on Rachel’s desk.

“What’s that?” Rachel asked.

“It’s a CD,” Quinn said, rolling her eyes.

“I can see that,” Rachel said. “Why are you giving it to me?”

It hurt more than Quinn cared to admit that Rachel looked at her with such suspicion. Before all this happened, Rachel would have just grinned, thanked her and stuck the CD into her computer to listen to it.

“It’s an episode of _This American Life_ ,” Quinn explained. “I thought you’d like it.”

Rachel paused and she stared at Quinn for a long moment. Rachel thought about saying something like, ‘if you’re giving me a computer virus, I’ll kick your ass’ or something akin to that. But instead Rachel took a breath. “Thank-you,” she said. “I’ll listen to it right now.”

Quinn smiled. “It’s funny. I think you’ll like it.”

Rachel smiled back. “Well, you know me.”

Rachel pulled her headphones out of her iPod and stuck them into her computer. She then put the CD that Quinn gave her into the computer to listen to it.

Quinn was gratified to hear Rachel occasionally chuckle quietly as she listened to it. But Rachel didn’t talk to her afterward the way Quinn hoped Rachel would. In fact, soon after that, Rachel left to help a client and Quinn didn’t see Rachel for the rest of the day.

At the end of work day, Quinn and Helena were the only ones left.

“Hey,” Quinn said. “Do you want to get a drink?”

Helena shrugged. “Sure.”

\--

Quinn found herself blabbing everything to Helena, partly because only someone from work would understand all the pressure and the stress of the job, would understand how those seven other girls would come to feel like family. Only someone from work would understand how as with family, sometimes, Quinn wanted to _kill_ the girls she worked with. Helena was not offended to hear that. And Helena was the only one at work who wasn’t a shameless gossip. Helena liked to recede into the background and so her nickname was “Ghost” with the other girls. Sarah called her “Kremlin” because Helena was the most private one. Helena joked that it was fitting because her mother was Japanese and the Japanese loved their ghost stories, and her father was Russian, so the ‘Kremlin’ thing sort of fit. But Quinn knew that despite all the jokes about how Helena was creepily quiet sometimes and so private that the skeletons in her closet probably actually _were_ skeletons, Helena would keep whatever Quinn told her to herself. That was more important to Quinn than anything else, because she really needed to talk to someone who would understand, and the person who she wanted to talk to wasn’t talking to her. And honestly, Quinn was still mad at Rachel anyway.

Quinn started by explaining the plan, the April Fools’ joke. She explained the fight she had with Rachel and was gratified that Helena conceded it was weird that Rachel never said anything about being on the Glee club at McKinley, particularly because they’d competed against each other a lot. But she scowled when Helena defended Rachel by saying that clearly Rachel had her reasons, and contrary to Quinn’s suspicions, it probably had nothing to do with Quinn. Then she meekly admitted that she _hated_ fighting with Rachel and she hated Rachel for saying they weren’t friends anymore, but more than that, she hated that it was true. Because she really wanted Rachel back.

“But you guys seem like you’re getting back on track,” Helena pointed out.

“I know, but I don’t think we’re ever going to be as good friends.”

“No,” Helena said bluntly. “Probably not.”

Quinn bristled. “Thanks a lot.”

“I’m just being honest,” Helena pointed out. “You guys are both pretty mad at each other, but I’m sure it’ll blow over. But it probably won’t be like it was before. That doesn’t mean you guys can’t be good friends again though.”

Quinn was glum. “I can’t believe I was so stupid. Why did I plot this stupid April Fools’ joke? That’s the whole reason why it blew up like this.”

Helena chuckled. “Why, did you actually fall in love with her or something?”

Quinn looked away morosely.

Helena’s grin faded. “Seriously?”

“I think so,” Quinn said with a sigh. “I like her better than I like Dan.”

“You like _everyone_ better than you like Dan. You need to put that poor man out of his misery.”

“I love him,” Quinn said defensively. She sighed. “But lately, when I come home to him, I kind of think how I’d rather be with Rachel.”

“But you’re still mad at her.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “I am. But that doesn’t mean I want her out of my life.” She sucked in a deep breath. “It’s really hard that she’s not my friend anymore,” she admitted quietly, and it was a difficult admission to make because Quinn had long prided herself on not needing anyone. She didn’t need parents, a sister or any kind of family. She’d made it on her own, and she was planning on making it on her own long after anyone or everyone had left her.

“You know you aren’t supposed to fall for your own April Fools’ joke, right?

“I _know_ that, asshole!”

Helena looked at her sympathetically. “She’s sad without you, too, friend.”

“I think she’s just mad.”

“No,” Helena said. “You know her mad face and her sad face are totally different. When she gets mad, she looks like this…” Helena widened her eyes and glowered intensely at Quinn. “She gets crazy eyes!” Helena exclaimed. “But when she’s sad, she gets all…” Helena sagged her shoulders, looked down at the table and jutted her lower lip out. “She’s not mad. At least, not _all_ mad. She’s sad without you, too.”

Quinn gave Helena a small smile. “You know she hates it when you guys imitate her.”

“But she’s so fun to imitate.”

Quinn chuckled and smiled fondly at the thought of their friend. “Yeah.”

\--

It was another month of each of them offering gentle invitations to rekindle their friendship and then retreating from one another.

Until finally, one Thursday, Quinn sent Rachel an email. Her stomach was in knots as she wrote it. She didn’t know what she’d do if Rachel refused.

_Dinner and drinks at Capitol City? We can go next door to Hotel Café afterward. I checked their website and I don’t know anyone playing, but it’s always decent.”_

Quinn surreptitiously watched Rachel as the brunette read the email. Rachel bit her lip and she was visibly contemplative. Rachel’s eyes flickered over to Quinn and Quinn immediately looked away, her cheeks reddening. How embarrassing.

Moments later Rachel sent back the email. It was short, but Quinn breathed a sigh of relief.

 _Sure_.

\--

It was awkward. Rachel barely spoke and Quinn couldn’t find anything to say, so they ate and drank in silence for a while. They were so quiet that people seated on both sides of them kept giving them curious glances.

“Here,” Rachel said, shoving her second dirty martini at Quinn. “This is the best dirty martini ever.”

Quinn took it and sipped it. “It is,” she agreed. She held up her apple martini. “This is pretty good. Do you want to try it?”

Rachel shook her head. “No thanks,” she said.

They finished their dinner, ordered a third round of drinks and people-watched for a while. Then they walked next door through the alley into Hotel Café, which was a well-known and much respected music venue in LA. They ordered a couple of bottled waters and then stood off to the side watching the various bands play their sets.

After a few hours, they left. It was a warm May night as they walked around the corner to where they parked their cars.

“I missed this,” Rachel commented as she walked. She didn’t look at Quinn as she said this.

“I did, too,” Quinn agreed. She reached out to put her hands on Rachel’s shoulders. “I’m sorry about everything. I missed you.”

Rachel sighed and she initially avoided eye contact as she shifted uncomfortably, but she finally peered up into Quinn’s eyes. “I’m sorry about everything, too. I missed you, too.”

Quinn hesitantly stepped forward and then hugged Rachel. Rachel exhaled softly and wrapped her arms around Quinn.

And things felt…almost okay again.

\--

After that, things started to get back to normal. They resumed their Thursday night dinner and drinks night, they were talking to each other at work again and the genuine affection between them returned and was apparent.

Everyone was relieved.  
  
\--

It wasn’t long after that Quinn moved out of the apartment she shared with Dan.

“We aren’t breaking up,” she told everyone emphatically. “We just can’t live together. We’re trying to _save_ the relationship.”

Of course, it was one thing to take the couch for the night. All couples did it at least once in a while and everyone moved from the bed at least once in a relationship. It was healthy. But it was a whole other thing when someone moved out into a separate building.

The relationship was over not too long after that.

\--

The end of Quinn’s relationship meant that Rachel and Quinn spent even _more_ time together, which was good. It was nice. But it also meant that Rachel had to confront some things that she definitely did not want to confront.

Like the fact that when she talked, Quinn looked at her lips.

Or the fact that when they watched a movie together on her couch, Quinn put her hand on her thigh, and Rachel didn’t make any gesture to move and then when Nick came home, Rachel scrambled away, feeling guilty.

Or the fact that sometimes when Quinn looked at her a certain way, Rachel was _sure_ they were about to kiss, and she was always both relieved and sad when they didn’t.

But nothing ever happened, and for that, Rachel was grateful.  
\--

Everything was fine until one night, they kissed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Title:** April Fools  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R, maybe  
**Length:** 6000  
**Spoilers:**. Through Sectionals.  
**Summary:** An April Fools’ joke stops being a joke. AU future fic, I’d classify this as angsty romantic comedy.

* * *

 

Rachel could not believe that she was twenty five years old, and she was still a cheater. She didn’t think she was a cheater, not the way other people were cheaters. But the evidence was plain. She carried on a brief, but regrettable affair when she was eighteen and granted she hadn’t been married at the time and she’d only just started dating Nick at the time, but it was still cheating. And now she was twenty five and she was cheating on her husband.

She was _cheating_ on her _husband_.

She was cheating on her husband with _Quinn_.

If it just stopped at that one kiss-- a kiss that she initiated, Rachel would have just kept it to herself and lived with the guilt for the rest of her life.

But it didn’t just stop at one kiss.

It didn’t just stop at kissing.

And just when Rachel tried to convince herself it was something she could put a stop to, that it didn’t mean anything at least in terms of feelings for either of them, Quinn had to tell her she loved her.

“I love you,” Quinn whispered, pressing a kiss to Rachel’s neck. “Please don’t leave,” she pleaded. “Nick’s working, right? He won’t even be home until tomorrow night. You can stay. Don’t leave.”

Rachel swallowed hard. She shut her eyes. The problem wasn’t that she wanted to go. The problem was that she wanted to stay. She reminded herself that she was married.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Rachel said. “I’m _married_. I can’t do this to him!”

There was silence and then Quinn swallowed hard. “I know.”

“I love him.”

“I know.”

“He’s the only family I have.”

“I know.”

Rachel smiled sadly. She palmed Quinn’s cheek. “I love you, you know.”

Quinn took a shaky breath. “I know that, too.”

“I can’t leave him.”

Quinn looked at her. She wanted to say ‘I know,’ because she did know. But instead, she found herself asking “Why not?”

Rachel looked away. “I have to go,” she said quietly. She reflexively moved to kiss Quinn’s cheek, but then pulled back. “I’m sorry,” she said bleakly. “I’m so sorry.”

\--

The affair ended, but the friendship didn’t. Rachel wasn’t sure if that made it harder or easier.

It was true that she’d always worried that her marriage would end, because honestly, she hadn’t been ready to get married. She’d been twenty years old when she got married, and when he asked her to marry him, she knew she wasn’t ready. But relationships didn’t survive after rejected marriage proposals, and back then, she’d wanted to save the relationship. So she got married. But she’d always felt like she missed out on dating, but whose fault was that? Nick didn’t _force_ her into marriage, and he was a good guy. He deserved a wife he could trust. He deserved a wife who could keep it in her fucking pants.

Some part of her always thought her marriage would end. But she didn’t think her marriage would end like this. She didn’t _want_ her marriage to end like this.

She had to admit to herself that as much as she loved Nick, she just loved Quinn more. But Nick had married her over his entire family’s objections and he’d been there for her when she was a scared, angry, newly orphaned sixteen year old kid. She couldn’t leave him. Not like this.

But she still felt like she owed it to Quinn to explain.

Instead of their usual Thursday night dinner and drinks at a restaurant, they decided to get together at Quinn’s new apartment.

They finished eating and were drinking Jack and Diet Cokes while watching the Thursday NBC line-up when Rachel shut off the TV.

“My dads died the day of Nationals,” Rachel said quietly. “The Nationals that we competed at,” she added softly.

Quinn’s eyes were wide. “Rach--“

“They were in Orlando that year, remember?”

“Yes,” Quinn whispered. “Of course.”

Everything was making sense to her now.

“Nick was one of the policemen I met that day,” Rachel said. “And he was _really_ good to me. He was _so_ good to me. I was seriously about to go out of my mind. If he hadn’t been there, I would have _completely_ lost it. He just knew how to deal with me. Not even Mike knew how to deal with me. After I went back to Ohio, we stayed in touch and then when I moved to LA, he moved to LA, too.”

“You said you guys met because he pulled you over for speeding.”

Rachel smiled sadly. “I didn’t want to tell you the truth.”

Quinn nodded. “I understand,” she said quietly.

“I’m sorry I lied to you,” Rachel said. “It’s just… that time in my life, I don’t like to think about it. I _can’t_ think about it.”

Quinn nodded. “I understand,” she whispered.

“He was good to me when I needed it,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry,” she said bleakly. “I love you. I love you so much. But I can’t leave him.”

“I get it,” Quinn said with a sigh. “You love him.”

Rachel gave her a tight smile. “Not as much as I love you,” she admitted. “I think it’s been that way for a long time now. Years, maybe.”

Quinn squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as possible. “You shouldn’t have told me that,” she whispered. It would make it so much harder now just to walk away, especially because it’d been the same way for her, too.

“I don’t know what to do,” Rachel said sadly. “I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t want to hurt you, either.”

“I’ll be fine,” Quinn said softly. She opened her eyes and gave Rachel a tiny smile. “He’s a good guy and he loves you. I hate that we did this to him.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Rachel protested. “I kissed you.”

“I’ve been wanting you to do it for a long time,” Quinn admitted with a sigh. “I kept hoping you would. I had a hand in it, too. If you hadn’t, I would have kissed you eventually.”

“I’m the one who’s married,” Rachel said, her voice sharp. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. This was my fault. You don’t have any blame in this. It was my responsibility, not yours.”

Quinn rubbed her face. Rachel was the married one, and maybe it was her responsibility to have kept things platonic. But Quinn knew she had a hand in all this. She kept putting her hand on Rachel’s thigh when they watched a movie or TV together, or even when they were just driving together and when Rachel didn’t protest, she escalated it by rubbing her hand up and down Rachel’s thigh. And she could sense that Rachel was uncomfortable, but she didn’t stop because Rachel never told her to. So maybe Rachel was supposed to have stopped her, but Quinn probably shouldn’t have done it in the first place.

“It was my fault, too. It’s not like I didn’t know you were married.”

Rachel shut her eyes. “I wish I’d met you sooner.”

Quinn gave her a sad smile. “Maybe we were just meant to meet later in life than earlier,” she said gently, parroting Rachel’s words back to her.

Rachel gave her a sad smile. “We just weren’t meant to be,” she said.

“And we would have been a disaster anyway.”

“Yeah,” Rachel agreed. She reached out and wiped at Quinn’s eyes. “We probably shouldn’t have our dinner and drink Thursdays anymore.”

“No,” Quinn said softly. She looked away. “I’m going to miss them.”

“Me too,” Rachel said softly. “I’m going to go, okay?”

“Wait,” Quinn said, putting her hand on Rachel’s arm. She touched Rachel’s cheek. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You talked about your dads and…”

“I’m okay,” Rachel reassured.

“I know everything worked out for you,” Quinn said softly. “But were you okay back then?” she asked hesitantly, because she loved Rachel, but now she was worried about the teenaged girl Rachel had once been. And God, if that didn’t tell Quinn that she was in love, then what else would?

Rachel gave her a tight smile. “Not really,” she admitted. “I was kind of a mess.” She touched Quinn cheek. “One day, I’ll tell you about it.”

“Really?” Quinn asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Rachel promised. “Soon. Just…just not tonight, okay?”

“Okay,” Quinn whispered.

Rachel stood up. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Quinn breathed her in, trying to hold onto the memory of them. “Me too.”

\--

They stayed friends, but for their own sanity, things between them had to cool down.

It was hard for both of them and Rachel found herself wondering if this was the inevitable progression of their friendship, or if it was because they’d played what her daddy would have called a ‘dangerous game.’

\--

Rachel thought she could keep the affair a secret. After all, it was over. But she was a cheater, not a liar. She couldn’t come home to her husband, sleep in the same bed and look him in the eye and just carry that secret with her. He deserved to know. He deserved to be with someone better than her.

Some people wouldn’t want to know, and if Nick were that type, she would have just kept it to herself. But he was the type of person who’d want to know.

He was predictably, understandably, outraged

It was over.

She moved out of her apartment, quietly. She didn’t tell anyone about it, not even Quinn.

He didn’t want to work on the marriage.

“I should have known what it meant that my family hates you,” he said to her.

It stung, but she couldn’t help but agree with him.

It was sad that it was such a relief that he didn’t want to work on the marriage. If he’d wanted to, she was sure she would have tried, too. She didn’t know exactly what that said about her as a person, but it was nothing good.

She was going to be divorced before she was 30.  
\--

Quinn walked outside her building to the tree she and Rachel labeled ‘the smoking tree’ because she wanted a few minutes away from everyone. She found Rachel already there, talking on her cell phone. She approached her and heard Rachel utter the words “our divorce.”

Quinn froze and the sound of her shoes made a scraping sound on the concrete. Rachel looked up and gave her a small smile. She held up one index finger, signaling to Quinn to hold on.

Rachel talked for a few more minutes and then hung up.

“Hi,” Rachel said softly.

“Hi,” Quinn said. “Did I…did I hear you correctly?”

Rachel tried to smile, but it faltered. “Nick and I are splitting up,” she admitted.

“When did this happen?”

“A couple months ago,” Rachel said.

Quinn’s eyes were wide. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Rachel stared down at the ground. “I didn’t want you to think you were obliged or something to be with me,” she said. She ran her hand through her hair. “He and I would have split up eventually,” she said. “I just needed some headspace, you know? “

Quinn nodded. “Are you okay?”

Rachel nodded. “Yeah,” she said.

“Is he okay?”

Rachel nodded again. “I think so.”

It was a fairly easy divorce. They didn’t have any property or any children and they were each still driving the cars they owned before they got married. And once Nick got over his initial anger, his true nice guy self came out because he wasn’t being a jerk about the divorce. They had the same lawyer who was mediating their divorce and despite the fact he was mad at her and didn’t want to talk to her, it was going to be a pretty amicable divorce, all things considered. It didn’t feel good-- she loved Nick and he was good to her and she’d never wanted to leave him. It was just that it felt like their relationship had run its natural course. She just wished she hadn’t been such an awful wife.

“Do you want to get a drink after work?” Quinn asked. “You seem like you could use one.”

Rachel chuckled. “Yeah,” she said. “That’d be great.” She tilted her head to one side. “Hey,” she said. “Do you want to walk around the corner with me? I’ll buy you a latte from Starbucks.”

“Will you make it a venti?”

“Of course.”

“Then yes.”

\--

They sat across from each other in a sushi restaurant that evening, talking as quietly as possible. Once they were done, they went to Rachel’s new apartment which was only a couple miles from Quinn’s new apartment.

“It nice,” Quinn said looking around. It was in a safer neighborhood, which was a plus in Quinn’s opinion. But more importantly, the apartment seemed much more like Rachel than the apartment that Rachel had shared with Nick.

“I like it,” Rachel said with a smile.

Quinn looked around and then sighed. “God, we fucked up,” she said ruefully.

“Me worse than you,” Rachel said with a sigh. “And not just with Nick,” she added. “With you, too.” She reached for Quinn’s hand and led the blonde to the couch. “You both deserved better from me,” she said once they sat down. “I’m sorry.”

“I wish you’d told me you guys split up.”

“I know,” Rachel said. “But I just didn’t think we should jump into anything yet. You were with Dan for over three years and you just split up with him. My marriage just ended. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d feel responsible or something and then you’d feel obliged to date me. And you’re not.”

“I know,” Quinn said. “But I want to.”

Rachel grinned crookedly. “And I don’t blame you,” she joked.”Who wouldn’t want to date me?”

Quinn swatted Rachel’s knee. “God, you and that ego.”

Rachel laughed softly, but she became serious. “We really did fuck things up,” she said seriously. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “This feels like a bad start.”

“I know, right?!” Rachel exclaimed. She covered her face. “I’m a dirty cheater,” she moaned.

Quinn patted Rachel’s shoulder. “I’ve been a dirty cheater, too.”

“But I’ve been a dirty cheater more than once.”

“So have I.”

“On the same person.”

“So have I.”

Rachel couldn’t help it. She laughed. It was the first time she could remember in the past couple months when she really wanted to laugh.

Quinn joined in.

Once they stopped laughing and caught their breath, Rachel became serious. “You and I are a stupid idea.”

“I know,” Quinn said with a sigh. “We probably would kill each other.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t care,” Quinn said defiantly. “I want to try.”

Rachel was silent for a moment before she spoke. “Me too,” she said quietly.

\--

They didn’t jump into it right away, because _hello_ , that was dumb and foolhardy. They started off by resuming their Thursday night drinks and dinner which they had to put a stop to for their own sanity. Eventually this led into Thursday night drinks and dinner, followed by a sleepover which eventually led into spending entire weekends together.

“I knew it would happen eventually,” Lina commented smugly.

“You knew nothing,” Helena told her.  
  
\--

One day, Quinn went to Rachel’s apartment and let herself in. She had a late appointment with a client, and she was just eager to be done with work for the day. She wasn’t living at Rachel’s apartment or anything, but she had a key.

She walked in and she heard water running. She walked toward the bathroom and realized that yes, Rachel was in fact, taking a shower in the bathroom.

At first, she thought maybe it was the radio. But then Quinn realized that Rachel was singing.

She’d never heard Rachel sing, at least, not when they were officially acquainted. It’d been so long since she heard Rachel sing in person, she’d forgotten how amazing Rachel was. Even after all these years with no further professional experience or training, Rachel was still so incredibly, achingly talented.

She listened to Rachel sing ‘Defying Gravity’ and there was a few minutes where Rachel was probably rinsing shampoo or something out of her hair. And then Rachel started singing again.

“Gonna use my arms, gonna use my legs, gonna use my style, gonna use my sidestep, gonna use my fingers, gonna use my my my imagination!”

She was singing ‘Brass in the Pocket’ by the Pretenders. A few minutes later, Rachel came out and shrieked when she saw Quinn standing there. Instinctively, Rachel moved to cover herself and then realized that was dumb because she was pretty well covered by the towel and anyway, she didn’t have anything that Quinn hadn’t already seen before.

“Hi,” Rachel greeted. She kissed Quinn’s cheek and grinned when Quinn smacked her butt through the towel. “Let me get dressed. I’ll be right out.”

Quinn smiled. “Okay.”

She sat on Rachel’s couch and waited. A few minutes later, Rachel came out, toweling off her hair.

“Was Eka okay?”

“Eka’s fine,” Quinn confirmed. Eka was her client. Quinn thought Ekatrina was a much prettier name, but Quinn understood that Eka had her reasons.

\--

They lounged around after dinner, watching _Happy Feet_ on the ABC Family Channel.

Quinn thought she might as well address the elephant in the room.

“Why didn’t you ever pursue singing professionally?”

Rachel gave her a long look and then sighed. “I had my reasons,” she said.

Quinn thought that maybe that was all Rachel was going to say, but then the brunette began to speak again.

“You know now that my dads died the day of Nationals,” she said quietly. “I was on the bus with the team, and they were driving from the hotel.” Rachel’s voice became flat. “They got into an accident and they both died.” She bit her lip. “I looked for them before I went on, and I was _mad_ when I didn’t see them. I didn’t even think to be worried, I never even thought that something could happen to them which was so stupid of me because my parents tried to show up for everything. They made an effort so that at least one of them could show up to everything I did. But they’d been fighting that morning. They’d been arguing for weeks, actually and I just assumed they missed out because they were arguing. I was so mad because I just _nailed_ it that day.”

“I remember,” Quinn said softly. Once Rachel finished with her solo, Quinn had known her team was beaten. It was just too amazing.

“I didn’t find out until later that my dads were gone,” Rachel said. She paused, because she didn’t have to tell Quinn that she’d been making out with some mohawked boy in a supplies closet-- Quinn already knew this from when Quinn had tried to investigate. She’d been ready to go all the way with him because her heart had been shattered from breaking up with Mike _again_. In retrospect, Mike had been such a saint for putting up with her. She’d been ready to go all the way with that mohawked hoodlum looking boy when her teammates began shouting for her. She could hear Mike looking for her, and it was the waver in his voice that told her something was deeply wrong.

“I didn’t like what wanting all that so badly did to me,” Rachel continued. “I mean, my dads were _missing_ from this huge competition and it didn’t even occur to me to be worried. I was just obsessed with how well I did, how much I wanted to be this big Broadway actress and make a living singing and being a star. I was so _obsessed_ with it that while my dads were dying in some hospital thousands of miles from home--to support _me_ , I was mad at them for not being there. I quit Glee, decided not to audition for Julliard and moved out here for college. I just didn’t want any of it anymore. I didn’t like who it turned me into.”

 

“You were just a kid,” Quinn said softly. “If you were going to make it as an actress, you would have needed to be a little aggressive. You just let yourself get blinded a little, but it’s not like you did anything wrong.”

Rachel shrugged. “Yeah, whatever,” she said, but the way she said it sounded dismissive.  
“Anyway, that’s why I didn’t tell you when we first met. I thought you looked familiar when we first met, but when you told me you were on Vocal Adrenaline, I knew we’d crossed paths before even though we never met. But I didn’t want to get into it.” She paused. “I thought you might find out one day though,” she said with a sigh.

“You…you don’t blame yourself, right?” Quinn asked hesitantly. “I mean, because of your dads…”

Rachel looked away. “No,” she said softly.

Quinn was unconvinced. Primarily because Rachel was so unconvincing. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know,” Rachel said. She gave Quinn a small smile. “Believe me. People couldn’t get me into therapy fast enough. I _know_. Not my fault, yadda yadda.”

She was twenty five now and it’d been almost ten years since she lost her parents. She’d reconciled herself with the fact that her fathers wouldn’t have been in Orlando to die in a fiery car accident if she hadn’t put them in a position to be there. She was more or less at peace with that because changing that would have meant she would have been a _completely_ different person, that she wouldn’t have discovered a talent and a passion for singing or her love for the Glee club. She didn’t regret _that_ part of it. There were times when she hated herself, but she didn’t hate herself enough to want to change so intrinsically. So she’d forgiven herself for creating the circumstances which brought her fathers to a state so far away from home. She knew that if she hadn’t joined Glee, her parents would probably still be alive. But she’d made peace with that, because she’d come to accept that her talent was a part of who she was, and at the time, it was the biggest part of her. She’d come to realize that accidents really did happen.

But the thing she couldn’t forgive herself for, would _never_ forgive herself for was that she hadn’t been _worried_ when she couldn’t find her fathers. She should have been worried. She should have been freaking out because the last time _both_ of them missed one of her performances, she was six years old and it was only because Daddy broke his ankle. She was so damn self-absorbed, she never thought to be _worried_ her fathers were missing. That was what her ambition and self-absorption did to her. Instead of being worried her fathers were missing, she was mad at them because they missed her performance. And it was definitely a great one, but thinking about it sickened her because God, she’d just been so _arrogant_ , so proud of herself that she never stopped to be worried about her dads and they were _dead_ , which was pretty much the only thing that would have stopped them from supporting her at Nationals. She could never forgive herself for that, not as long as she lived.

Back then, she would have done anything, given up anything to achieve her dreams. But when she thought about giving stuff up, it was always stuff like extra sleep, dessert, lots of friends and privacy. She supposed it was because she was so blessed with loving parents, a few devoted friends and a high metabolism that she took it for granted. In high school, she didn’t have a huge amount of friends, but she didn’t _want_ a lot of friends-- she’d just wanted a few close friends she trusted, and she’d had that. She had great parents who loved her. When she thought about sacrifice, those weren’t things she was willing to sacrifice, and when she lost her parents, she’d realized that she was on the verge of turning into a real asshole-- the kind of person who _would_ choose ambition, status, acclaim and fame over love, family or friends. That wasn’t who she was raised to be, and she thought she owed it to herself and to her fathers to be better than that. She didn’t want to be a completely different person, but she did want to be the kind of person her fathers respected, and if she didn’t change, she wouldn’t have been able to grow into someone her fathers would have liked. Back then, she just didn’t trust herself not to let fame and celebrity go to her head or to not allow ambition and a quest for achievement warp her.

“What happened to you after your fathers died?” Quinn asked softly. “You must have been…what, sixteen?” Quinn asked, calculating. Nationals were held in June and Rachel’s birthday was in August. “They wouldn’t have let you live on your own.”

“We didn’t have any family,” Rachel admitted. “I went into foster care for a few weeks,” she said with a shrug. “My high school guidance counselor wanted to take me in, but they had to fingerprint her, even though they already had them on file because she was a teacher. They needed new ones or something. And they had to inspect her house to make sure it passed some federal regulations or something. But it happened kind of quickly, I moved in with her, she filed for legal guardianship and everything was okay.”

“You never said anything,” Quinn said softly. “You never told me any of that.”

“It’s not something I want to brag about, Quinn.”

“Was it bad? I mean, before you moved in with your guidance counselor?”

Sometimes Quinn wondered if foster care wouldn’t have been a better option to staying at home with her parents. But the devil she knew was better than the devil she didn’t.

“No,” Rachel said, with a shrug. “I stayed with this lady. She was nice to me. Nothing bad happened to me. My life didn’t change as much as you’d think. My dads were gone, but I was still at the same school, still had Mike. We got back together after my parents died, but I think he just felt sorry for me. I was a mess and so we broke up again, but he became my best friend. I still had Emma-- Ms. Pillsbury, my guidance counselor.”

“Do you still talk to her? Your high school guidance counselor?”

Rachel winced. “No,” she admitted. “I did a pretty good job of burning that bridge.”

She was too embarrassed and ashamed of herself to say anything more than that. She wondered if Emma Pillsbury regretted taking her in, regretting being so good to her only to be lashed out at by an angry seventeen year old on her way out to college. She wanted to apologize even now, but she’d been too cruel and the damage was just too much. Some bridges were so decimated, they couldn’t be rebuilt, and she could still see the wounded, devastated expression on Ms. Pillsbury’s face.

“Anyway,” Rachel said. “I didn’t like what I turned into, so I decided not to go to Julliard, not to try anymore. That’s why I never tried to do it professionally.”

“But you’re talented,” Quinn said quietly.

Quinn was a good singer, but she didn’t want to do it professionally, and she wasn’t sure if she would even be good enough to try. But Rachel was _amazing_. She had no doubt in her mind that if Rachel tried, Rachel would make it.

Rachel shrugged. “I’m almost 26 now,” she said. “What’s the point in trying now? I missed my chance.”

“So you _do_ still think about it.”

“Sometimes,” Rachel admitted. “I think I’d be able to handle it a little better now. But it’s too late. Nick and I would talk about it and we both agreed that it just wasn’t wise.”

“Well, you and _I_ are talking about it now,” Quinn pointed out. “And I think if you really want it, you should go for it.”

Rachel sighed. “Quinn, it’s just too late for me. Even if I wanted to, there are people who are younger, with more experience, with more training, more talent…I’m going to be 26 soon. I have rent, car insurance, clients who rely on me, student loans…I can’t.”

“You really don’t want to even try? I mean, I know this is LA and not Broadway. But this is _LA_.”

Rachel gave her a small smile. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin now,” she said with a sigh. She touched Quinn’s cheek. “And anyway. What I want is different now.” She smiled, and this time, it was a full, wide smile. “That stuff doesn’t matter to me anymore.” She pressed a kiss to Quinn’s lips and then pulled back. She traced her thumb across Quinn’s lower lip. “This is what’s important to me now,” she said softly.

It was important to Quinn, too, and she thought about how much easier it would be for both of them to go on like this-- to work together, to continue to date, to be friends who turned into lovers which was the biggest cliché in the entire world. It was status quo, and as long as they had status quo, Quinn thought they would be okay.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about how Rachel had given up such a long-held cherished dream. Maybe it wasn’t something Rachel wanted anymore, but Quinn didn’t think so. She could just see it in Rachel’s face when she talked about it-- Rachel still wanted it. Okay, so Quinn wasn’t sure if Rachel would make it. There were heaps of talented people in Los Angeles who were trying to make it, and most of them never did. But Quinn didn’t think it’d hurt to try. But she had no idea how Rachel would even go about starting to try, especially because Rachel was still trying to convince Quinn and herself that she didn’t want to.

\--

Sometimes Fate had a way of intervening to make things happen.

Santana and Brittany came out for a visit and of course Santana, Brittany and Quinn dragged Rachel off to Brass Monkey for karaoke.

Rachel initially refused to sing, but all it took was for Quinn to softly cajole.

“Please?” Quinn pleaded. “I love hearing you sing, and you never sing in front of me.”

Rachel gave her a long look and then sighed. She stood up and walked grudgingly to grab a song catalogue.

Quinn grinned at her. “Yay,” she cheered softly.

“You’re a nerd,” Rachel told her.

Rachel chose a song, wrote it on a scrap of paper and brought it to the guy who was loading the songs. She hoped they’d get tired and could leave before her song got called. There were a lot of people out and she assumed there were a lot of people ahead of her in the queue. Moments later, Rachel saw Santana pass him something.

Once the current song ended, Rachel was called up.

Rachel stared at Quinn.

Quinn grinned. “I had Santana bribe him.”

Rachel sighed. “You suck.” But she got up anyway.

A few minutes later, the entire place was cheering after Rachel finished singing ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade.’

“Damn,” Santana commented. “I forgot she really is talented.”

Brittany smiled. “Wow.”

Quinn grinned proudly and stood up to greet her returning girlfriend. She grabbed Rachel and spun her around in a hug.

Rachel blushed and smiled and thanked the people who’d approached her to tell her how amazing she’d been. She sat down and sipped at her beer when the guy approached her.

Late 30s to early 40s, he had a business card in hand. “If you need representation, you should call me,” he said.

He was an agent.

“Uh, thanks,” Rachel said,

He nodded at her and walked away.

Rachel crumpled the card in her hand.

“You should keep it,” Quinn said softly.

“He’s probably just some perv.”

“You should keep it.”

Rachel took a deep breath and unfolded the card. She stuck it in her pocket. “Happy?”

Quinn smiled. “Immensely.”

Rachel smiled back, grudgingly, because Quinn had forced her to do something she didn’t want to do, but once she did it, she was glad she did. She kind of resented it, but not really. “Me too.”

\--

Rachel wasn’t a fortune teller, despite the fact that she suspected she was a little psychic at times. She didn’t know what the future would hold for her, she didn’t know how her life would turn out. Her life was already vastly different from what she thought it would be when she was 16, when she was 20, and hell, even just a few months ago. She didn’t know if she wanted to trade in her comfortable life of the nine-to-five job for the less predictable life of auditions and rejections. She didn’t know _what_ she wanted anymore, at least, in terms of a career. Maybe it was her quarter life crisis. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was finally ready to pursue her dreams again. Maybe those dreams really had genuinely changed. She didn’t know.

All she knew was that she loved the woman by her side. Sometimes, she wished that she’d met Quinn years ago, because maybe it would have saved them both a lot of trouble. It would have saved them the trouble of hurting good men, of hurting each other time and again.

Their paths had always been close together, but far enough apart that they never crossed. Maybe they met exactly when they were meant to. Maybe if they’d met in high school or even in college, they wouldn’t have been friends. Maybe they would have hated each other. After all, she’d been a mess in high school after her parents died, and as far as Rachel could tell, Quinn wasn’t exactly put together back then. If they’d met back then, maybe their friendship would have never survived. Maybe they wouldn’t have even been friends.

In college, Rachel had been the kind of girl who was far too attached to her boyfriend. She’d gotten married when she was twenty years old, for God’s sake. So maybe that wasn’t the right time to meet Quinn either, even though they’d both gone to UCLA and a perusal of their official transcripts indicated they’d shared multiple classes together though they were large lectures with hundreds of students.

She’d met Quinn exactly when she was meant to and despite everything that happened between them, Rachel was glad they met when they did. Rachel wished she hadn’t hurt Nick, that she’d been brave enough, adult enough to just end things instead of cheating on him. But she couldn’t change the past, she just wanted to be better than the worst things she’d done in her life.

She didn’t know if she and Quinn would work out-- Rachel hoped they did, because the thought of them _not_ making it filled her with such profound sadness. There was nothing Rachel wouldn’t do, nothing she wouldn’t give up to make things work with Quinn.

So far things with Quinn were good and it looked like they were going to work out, and honestly, Rachel wasn’t sure if she could ask for more than that. She didn’t know what she wanted anymore, but for the first time in her life, she was okay with a little mystery.

Her girlfriend sent her an email.

_Want to get coffee at Coffee Bean?_

Rachel bit back a smile. That was now code for driving off for a while to make out.

 _Let’s go_.

They stepped out into a hot, smoggy summery Los Angeles afternoon.

“It’s gross out here,” Quinn commented as they walked to Quinn’s car.

Rachel reached for her hand. “It’s not so bad.”

It was pretty gross outside. The temperature was over 100 degrees and there was a haze of smog in the sky. But the day didn’t seem so bad with Quinn by her side, holding her hand. After work, they’d pick up something cold to eat, because it was too hot to cook. They’d sprawl out on the couch with the air conditioning running and they could forget that the outside world was gross. Could Rachel ask for things to be better than that? Could she ask for more? It felt way too selfish to want more than this.

Quinn smiled fondly. “No,” she agreed. “It’s not.”

THE END


End file.
